


Siren Night

by Mertiya



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU - Comicverse, DCU Animated, Gotham City Sirens (Comics)
Genre: Angels, F/M, Friendship, Gotham City Sirens, Supernatural Elements, Surreal, Weird supernatural shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-14
Updated: 2012-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-29 12:04:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 19
Words: 44,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/319706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Gotham City Sirens--bold, brave and beautiful.  Nothing can bring them down--until a chance encounter results in near death for Harley Quinn and a new enemy rises, more powerful than anything they have faced before, under the guise of a face from Selina Kyle's past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hush, Little Harlequin

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone who keeps up with the comics, this work spins off in the middle of the Gotham City Sirens series. I think it's volume one, or maybe volume two. In any case, it becomes AU after Harley goes off on her date with "Bruce Wayne." The first chapter contains elements of possible non-con, and there are some similar thematic elements thereafter. Also, in addition to Joker/Harley, there's a bit of Ivy/Harley, if you squint.

Harley giggled to herself as the night air rushed through her hair.  Brucie sure knew how to show a girl a good time.  After the rooftop dinner, which had been four courses, he had kissed her very gently and asked if she’d like to come back to Wayne Manor with him.  Harley wasn’t much for gentle kisses, and she did feel a little bit bad, but she and Mister J were on a cooling off period, and Cat and Ivy would be so _proud_ of her for going on a real date with somebody who wasn’t Mister J.

“Thanks for a really nice evening, Brucie,” she cooed, leaning toward him.  Damn, it was a nice car.  Surreptitiously she ran her fingers over the soft leather of the convertible, then squirmed happily, rubbing her bare lower thighs against it.

“Oh, you’re welcome, Harley,” he said graciously.  “Anything for the woman who came to my rescue.”  He reached out and patted her arm.

“Oh, it was nothin’,” she giggled, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.  “I just figured you went to bat for me at my parole board, so I oughta return the favor.  I didn’t do much, just knocked some sense into those guys who were trying to rob you.”

“I am quite grateful,” he said, with a smile that sent shivers down her spine.  _Girl, you gotta get out more_.  The vibrators just weren’t cutting it any longer.  Three nights ago, she’d tried to have some happy time and ended up sobbing for an hour over Mister J.  Ivy had found her and told her that this was _not_ healthy.  Well, at least Ivy couldn’t say she wasn’t _trying_.  She glanced appreciatively at Brucie again.  His rugged features and strong chiseled jaw were classically handsome, and he was a much bigger man than Mister J.  Pity, he wasn’t quite her type, but he was still good-looking as all hell.  He probably wouldn’t be too into any of the stuff Mister J was into, but that was also probably a good thing.  It’d keep her mind off her Puddin’ for a little while.

She squealed as a droplet of rain bounced into her face.

“I’m afraid the convertible wasn’t such a great idea,” he said apologetically, as they pulled onto the long gravel driveway leading up to Wayne Manor.

“Ooh, but it’s kinda fun,” Harley smiled.  Being in a convertible was so— _special_.  It made her feel all funny inside.  And it was kind of liberating being on a date in her normal clothes and _not_ toting a gun and a bag of ammo.  Less exciting, certainly, but with its own kind of charm.

The spattering droplets turned into full-fledged rain as they pulled up in front of Wayne Manor.  Harley shrieked as cold water went down the back of her neck.  Brucie laughed and vaulted out of the car, grabbing her hand.  “Come on,” he called.  “We’ll let Alfred bring the car in!”

She did an easy flip out of the car to land beside him, then paused.  “Won’t it be bad for the upholstery?”

He pulled her backwards against him, and she was suddenly very aware of how warm he was and how very thin her wet, white t-shirt was, and how— _interested_ —he seemed to be.

“Never mind the upholstery,” he growled in her ear, and then he had turned her effortlessly around and was kissing her, crushing her against the side of the car, not so gentle anymore.  His hands were almost painfully tight on her upper arms as his tongue roughly parted her lips and forced entry.

 _Mister J_.  Tears sprang to her eyes even as her body responded to his ministrations.  His hands dropped to her breasts and she found herself moaning in response, but there was still that moment of panic—of _wrongness_ —but Ivy’s voice echoed firmly in her ears, and she pushed the moment away, as he took her in his arms and carried her toward the manor.

They paused for a moment, dripping, in the hallway.

“Alfred!” Brucie called loudly, and a quiet, elderly man with white hair appeared almost from nowhere.

“Yes, Mr. Wayne?”

Harley crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly and surprisingly conscious of the transparency of her t-shirt.  Guys seeing her body wasn’t something that usually bothered her, but this guy—it was as if he were her grandfather (if she’d had a grandfather).  She blushed and felt shame coursing through her veins, but if the manservant noticed her, he gave no sign of having done so.

“Is the master bedroom presentable?”

“Indeed, Mr. Wayne.”  Was that a barely noticeable pause before the final syllable?  Was it disapproval?  Did he think she was—Harley blushed again.  How many girls did Brucie bring home?  What _sort_ of girls?

“Thank you, Alfred.  Can you pull the car in?”

He took her arm and towed her toward the staircase even before Alfred’s “Certainly, sir,” began to issue from his mouth.

“Brucie,” she whispered as they climbed the staircase, tugging on his arm.  “I don’t think he likes me.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” he answered carelessly.                    

“But…”

“Forget about Alfred, Harley.”  He pushed her against the wall and began to kiss her again.  He guided her along it until she felt a door giving way behind her and they half-fell into the room and onto the bed.  Harley’s heart was going a mile a minute as he pushed her roughly down— _Mister J, teeth bared in a grin or a grimace, throwing her down onto the bed—_ and began to wrestle her t-shirt up over her arms.  Harley helped, wriggling, half-reaching for his buttons— _Mister J slapping her hand away, saying gutturally, “I’ll do that,”—_ but when Brucie didn’t try to stop her, she took a deep breath—hard to do between the moans—and, with her tongue trapped nervously between her teeth, fumbled with the first button.

It took too long to pop open.  He had her bra off and was reaching for her shorts by the time she was on the third button.  Her hands, wet with rain and sweat, slipped, and the button popped off.

“Oh god I’m sorry,” she mumbled around his tongue and winced, expecting a slap— _god what Mister J would do if she ruined his clothes!_   Brucie laughed.  “Never mind the shirt,” he said easily, and tore a hand down his front, spilling buttons across the bed.  Harley giggled and squealed as his hands reached for her waistband.

Then she was on the bed and the clothing was gone and he was on top of her, her legs anchored around him, and she giggled coquettishly and bit her lip and began to moan and squeal and _yes I’m doing it Ivy’ll be so proud of me—_ a little bland without quite as much pain as normal but still Brucie was pretty decent at this—and then he nipped at her lip, and she groaned and _Mister J would pound into her and bite her lip_ —and then his fingers on her back were tightening and— _Mister J would rake his nails along her back as she screamed half in pain and half in exhilaration and Mister J would—Mister J would—Mister J—Mister J—_ “Mistah J!”

And she lay on the bed and panted and wondered if she had said that out loud as Brucie continued to grunt and whisper something into her ear that somehow she couldn’t quite catch…

When he rolled off her, slick with sweat, she looked at him with sleepy eyes and smiled nervously.  “That was…real nice,” she whispered awkwardly.

He patted her on the head.  “Good,” he said, oddly through his teeth.  Harley sighed and slipped between the sheets and curled up, knees to her chest.  Usually she tried to cuddle, but right now she just wanted to be within herself.  She rocked herself a bit, trying to calm herself down.  _I did it…_ so why did she feel so—dirty?

“Go to sleep, Harley,” Brucie murmured from behind her, and she wondered why he didn’t try to touch her, but she was sleepy and his suggestion made sense, so she relaxed her (by now tentative) hold on consciousness and drifted away.

~

            She woke to a knee in the small of her back as her arm was twisted up behind her.  “Mistah J?” she said sleepily—it wouldn’t be the first time he’d woken her that way—but the response came in a voice that she didn’t recognize for a long moment, the calm, measured tones so different from what she’d heard of Brucie’s warm chuckle.

            “Where is she?”

            “Wh-what?” she stammered in confusion, tasting a mouthful of pillow.  She tried to turn over, but his weight pinned her on her front, and as he twisted harder, a twinge of pain shot through her left arm.  “Ouch—you’re hurting me,” she whined.

            “My dear Miss Quinzel, I am quite aware of that.  Now—this can be over very shortly if you will just tell me a little something I need to know.  Where is Catwoman?”

            Catwoman?  Why was he asking about Catwoman?  Harley wriggled again, trying to get free, and he twisted her arm harder.  “Why do you want to know?”

            His breath was hot on her ear as he leaned forward and answered.  “I don’t know that that is any of your business, Miss Quinzel.”  He twisted her arm farther, and she hissed in her breath and wriggled.  He sighed.  “I _was_ hoping you would be sensible about this, but I suppose that’s a little much to expect from the Clown’s ditzy sidekick.  Let me explain.  To put this in a format your brain can probably comprehend:  we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.”

            There was a brief pause.  Then he gave a quick twisting wrench.  There was a snapping noise, and Harley howled in abrupt pain.  Cold fear flooded her stomach.  She tried to struggle, and he pressed down on the broken arm.  She squealed in pain, trying to thrash one more time, before the pain overwhelmed her and she lay on the bed, panting.

            “I’m not a patient man, Miss Quinzel, but I am a reasonable one.  If you tell me where Catwoman is, I’ll let you go—and I’ll even patch up your arm into the bargain.”

            Tears were starting to her eyes, but she poked out her lip defiantly.  “No!”

            “No?” He punctuated the question with a wrench of the injured arm, and she gasped in pain again, then wriggled scornfully beneath him.

            “Have to try harder than that to hurt me—I go around with Mister J.”  _Why don’t you just tell him?_ Mister J hadn’t broken her arm in months, and the one time it had happened, he hadn’t really been _trying_.  It gave her a sick, dizzy feeling to be at the mercy of somebody who was causing her pain for the sake of getting something from her instead of for the sake of helping her—pleasuring her—or pleasuring himself. 

            “Ah, yes, the Joker.”  A light laugh.  “He was pitifully easy to manipulate.  Such a useful tool, to frame for my murder.”

            He framed Mister J—“Shit.  You’re not Bruce Wayne.  Shit.”

            “Ah, the light dawns.”  He knocked the side of her head with his knuckles, lightly at first, then hard enough to stun.  “Then as you’ve probably by this time _finally_ realized who I am, you’ll understand when I say—I want Catwoman because she took something of mine.”

            Hush.  The maniac who’d half-killed Selina—who’d cut out her _heart_ to get back at Batsy.  Harley shrieked in rage, and twisting herself to the limits of her flexibility, she shot a foot into the air and caught him on the ear.  It was a glancing blow, but he rocked slightly under it, and his right hand tightened on her uninjured wrist, nails digging into the wrist.

            “You are really starting to be a problem, Harleen.  I have no interest in hurting you—I just want what’s mine.  But I can’t have you kicking me like that.”

            His weight shifted on her back, and she heard a clattering noise.  Then he yanked her head back to display a batarang he was calmly swinging between two fingers.  The sight of it was enough to stir memories inside Harley that had her screaming and thrashing to get away again.  Agony welled through her arm and brought her back to lying, panting, on her stomach.

            “Interesting.  This scares you more than the pain does.”  She looked up into his frighteningly smiling face.  He was so calm.  Mister J was never calm like that, and when he was hurting her, it was for her own good.  And he wouldn’t—he wouldn’t—

            “I’ll even give you another chance, even after you so rudely lashed out at me like that.  Where is the delicious Miss Kyle?”

            “I—don’t—know,” Harley gritted out.

            “Unfortunate.  Oh, well.”  His weight shifted on her back again, and then pain flared through the back of her left knee, sharp enough that she screamed again.  “That’s one leg hamstrung.  Shall I do the other as well?  How much use do you think your ‘Mister J’ will have for a crippled sidekick?”

            “Mistah J wouldn’t care!  He loves me!”  She hit out blindly with her right arm, but he caught her hand, and this time pain flared in that as the batarang bit deeply and slowly into the palm.  She whimpered, tears forming in her eyes and dripping slowly down her cheeks. 

            He laughed.  “You’re pathetic.  You really think that maniac is capable of feeling love?”

            Panic surged through her.  “Mistah J loves me!  He does!  He does!”

            His voice came to her ears, amused and dismissive.  “If you say so.  Now, are you going to tell me where she is?”

            “I don’t know!  I don’t know!”

            “That’s a pity.”  She felt his weight moving toward her other leg, and she tried desperately to struggle, but he struck her heavily in the side of her head, and she lay stunned on the bed as the same throbbing, awful pain flared in the other knee.  She began to sob quietly. 

            “Please,” she moaned.  “Please let me go.”

            “Then _tell me where she is_.”  He punctuated each word with a shake of her broken arm, and she screamed again and opened her mouth to answer him, to just _tell him and make it stop Mister J never hurt me this badly_ , but if she told him, he’d do this to Cat. 

            “I can’t,” she whimpered, and then screamed as his strong hands took her arm and there was another snap, and another. 

            “Can’t?”

            Through the haze of pain, she heard an odd mewling noise, like an abandoned kitten.  Her throat was vibrating, and she was sniveling, but somehow she managed to choke out, “C-compound fracture.  Had that before.”

            “Have you now?  Well, I’ve never expected the Joker to be careful with his toys.  Now _where is she_?”

            His voice was deepened and made harsher by rage this time, and it sounded so very familiar that she began to laugh, a high-pitched hysterical gurgle that was half a scream and half a giggle.

            “You think this is funny?”

            “Y-you sound just like Batsy,” she wept, and suddenly he had dragged her head back to face him, jarring her injured arm.  His eyes were glittering dangerously.

            “Dear Bruce,” he said meditatively, licking his lips and holding out the batarang.  “His toys are so useful.”

            The moment when that piece of information clicked was like a physical shock.  “B-bruce Wayne is—“

            He laughed, low in his throat.  “Oh, you didn’t know that?  Where did you think I got this?  Well, no harm done.  And let me explain something, before I get back to interrogating you.”

            He placed the batarang almost delicately at the corner of her mouth, and before she knew what he was doing, ripped her cheek open ragged and bleeding in an explosion of pain.  “I’m sure your Mister J will thank me when he sees this,” he whispered.  “Now, listen, Miss Quinzel—are you listening very carefully?”

            She could do nothing but moan out her assent. 

            “Good.  I am _nothing_ like Bruce.  He stole everything from me, and for that he will pay.  We are nothing alike, except—“ he chuckled.  “—except in certain purely physical ways.”

            She stared at him and panted, tasting copious amounts of copper blood in her mouth. 

            “He’s quite the ladies’ man, is Bruce.  Although I expect he usually has better taste than I was forced to display tonight, you little whore.”

            Why did the _word_ hurt?  She moaned and wriggled and cried and suddenly found herself wishing that he would just _kill_ her.  Anything to make it all stop.  And she _would not_ tell him.  She would _never_ tell him anything.  Even if there wasn’t anything else she could do, she could frustrate him in that one thing.

            “Now back to tonight’s real endeavor.  Where is Catwoman?”

            “I don’t know,” she panted.  He shoved her head down forcefully against the pillow, and she tried to gasp for air and found she couldn’t.  Her cheek screamed in pain, and her lungs began to burn.  Finally, just before darkness threatened to surround her, he yanked her head up again, and she gasped desperately for half an instant before he forced her back down.

            “I really don’t have time for this, Miss Quinzel.  It is beginning to look as if I’ll have more luck just searching her out myself.  Now, honestly, why don’t you just tell me where she is and spare yourself all this pain?  I’ll even patch you all up.  I’m a good enough surgeon you’ll probably even be able to walk again.”  He yanked her head up again, and she gasped.  “What do you say?”

            “She’s my friend,” she said desperately. 

            He laughed.  “Your friend.  Oh, yes, Miss Selina Kyle is so well-known for looking out for other people than herself.  Fascinating.  I can’t believe I came across the one little criminal slut who wouldn’t sell anyone out faster than you can say boo.”

            “I’m not a slut,” she sobbed.

            “Words are _still_ hurting you?  I would think you’d be more worried about the blade.”  He traced it down her injured arm, and she screamed again.  “And not a slut?  I thought you were so faithful to your dear Mister J.”

            She was shuddering with pain and hurt and anger.  “At least he’s better in bed than _you_ are.”

            He smirked.  “Funnily enough, that isn’t something I particularly care about.  Now.  Are you going to tell me where Catwoman is or not?”

            “N-n-not.”

            He sighed.  “Oh, well.  At this point it becomes inexpedient to keep you alive.  God, did you have to bleed all over the sheets?  I’ll have to get Alfred to do something about—what was that?”  He turned his head.  “Did you hear something?”  He snickered when Harley whimpered, feeling adrenaline building in the pit of her stomach.  She tried to struggle weakly, but he leaned on her shattered arm, and she gave in with a moan.

            He yanked her head back, carefully set the batarang against her throat, then paused again.  This time she heard the soft scratching noise as well.  He made a frustrated noise and threw her down roughly.  “Just a minute,” he said, getting up.  As his weight left her back, Harley tried to move, but pain shot through her, and he glanced back.  “Now, now,” he said.  “No trying to escape.”  Then he flipped the batarang once, caught it, and drove it down through her bleeding right hand.  She arched her back and screamed, but he was moving away from her, no longer paying attention.  As he exited the door, she heard a startled exclamation and several thuds.

            Then, through the red haze that threatened to descend on her, she heard footsteps, and a horrified intake of breath.

            “Oh god—Harley—“ Catwoman’s horrified voice spoke quite close to her, and she blinked up and managed to turn her head toward her friend.

            “I didn’t tell him where you were,” she whispered, trying to smile, but the motion caught the cut in the side of her cheek, and she sobbed instead.

            “Oh my god, Harley, what’s he _done_ to you?  Hold on, hold on, it’s going to be okay… _Ivy, for god’s sake call an ambulance!_ ”

            As Cat sat down beside her, Harley managed to whisper again, “I didn’t tell him.”

            Selina stroked her hair gently back from her forehead.  “Of course you didn’t, Harls.  We’re _friends_.”


	2. The Man in the Church

            It was raining heavily, but Selina Kyle did not care.  She made her way through the rain, in only a hoodie and jeans, her black hair plastered against her white face.  She didn’t know where she was going; she only knew that she could not stay in the hospital any longer, pacing back and forth in the bright lights, hearing half-whispered conversations, occasionally getting quick updates from a nurse or doctor who took pity on her—updates that left her more and more anxious.

            _This is my fault_ , she thought to herself, and she stopped on the side of the road, clutching her hands to her stomach, wondering if she was going to be sick.  She was no stranger to vomiting, although usually the reason was distinctly more physical than psychological.

            She felt a prickling sensation along the back of her neck, as if somebody were watching her, and she turned sharply, but saw nothing other than the streetlights glowing faintly, surrounded by rain-enhanced auras of pale yellow.  She rubbed a hand across her face and began to walk again, her muscles obeying her commands only loosely. 

            Gotham flowed around her, like paint-smeared colors on a canvas.  She passed bright neon lights, smeared and fogged by rain, men standing beneath awnings, smoke curling up from white cigarettes, women in unbuttoned raincoats and not much else, who leaned over the men seductively and shamelessly.  She paused for a moment in the lights and warmth of an open doorway and found that she had begun to shiver.  She blinked vaguely up at the sign of the club over the door, which she couldn’t even read through the water blurring her lashes.  Or maybe they were tears.  Usually, she despised tears, but right now, she felt numb and cold inside, and she couldn’t even tell if she was actually crying.

            She moved on when a man approached her and murmured something vaguely suggestive.  She considered punching him, but her limbs were heavy and weak, so she just shook her head tiredly and walked onward.

            Her feet were cold.  She looked down and was surprised to see she was barefoot.  Hadn’t she put on her shoes before leaving?  Maybe not…thinking back, she had just—had enough.  Looked at Ivy, drooping with weariness, bent over like a thirsty plant.  She’d vaulted out of the window before she had even been able to think about what she was doing.

            A stray cat mewed pitifully from an alleyway, and she paused long enough to offer it a modicum of fish and scratch it behind the ears.  Its ribs stuck out, and it had several sores on the backs of its legs.  Selina sighed and stretched her arms out to it, but it gave her a frightened look and dashed back into the alley.

            “God,” she mumbled.  “Even the cats hate me now.”

            She leaned against the crumbling brick wall of the alley, pressing her forehead into the rough stone.  “I should have killed him when I had the chance,” she whispered.  Pain was growing in the back of her throat, and she tried not to think of Harley lying there on the bed, _weltering_ in blood, her pitifully torn face trying to smile. 

            “Oh, Harls,” Selina whispered miserably.  “This is all my fault.”

            Her feet carried her onwards.  It was getting darker as she left the downtown area of Gotham behind, and she found herself en route to Wayne Manor.  She gritted her teeth and pounded her palm into her face.  “God fucking damn it, Bruce,” she muttered.  “God fucking damn it, _why_ aren’t you _here_?”

            And what the fuck was wrong with her?  She didn’t want him here.  She didn’t want him to coddle her and protect her and _be there_ for her.  Damn him.

            She was suddenly assaulted with images of what Hush had done to Harley.  She’d been naked when they’d found her, after all…had he seduced her?  Harley wasn’t an easy girl to seduce, but she and Ivy had been after her for weeks to forget the Joker and try to get back into the dating pool.  Not that she’d meant “jump into bed with the next guy who asks,” but Harley wasn’t exactly good at fine distinctions like that. 

            _Oh god, I hope he seduced her_.  If he hadn’t—if her friend had been raped as well as tortured—she felt bile rising in the back of her throat again, and she had to stop walking as dry heaves racked her body.  And then she thought of Hush—looking like Bruce, always looking like Bruce—forcing a screaming Harley down onto a bed and— _No._   No.  Alfred wouldn’t have let that happen—but he let this happen, didn’t he?  She must have been screaming…

            She was too cold to stay out in this storm any longer.  And it was getting worse.  Lightning crackled across the sky, closely followed by a low rumble of thunder.  She found her legs pumping as she ran up a grassy hill toward a darkened building.  She pushed the door open and stumbled inside.

            The priest looked up from the altar, startled.

            “Oh—I’m sorry,” Selina stuttered, reaching for the door.

            “No, it’s fine,” he said hastily.  He was young for her idea of a priest—late forties, possibly, reddish hair streaked with gray.

            “I didn’t realize this was a church,” she said nervously.  “I’ll just be going.”

            “Wait,” he said, his voice soft, almost coaxing.  “You look soaked through, my daughter.  Can’t I get you something hot to drink?”

            The tone in his voice was strangely familiar, and as she placed it, she had an inane urge to giggle.  _Come here, sweetie.  I won’t hurt you—here’s the nice fish.  Wouldn’t you like the nice fish?_   Well—what worked on stray cats ought to work on Catwoman.  And she _was_ terribly cold and didn’t want to be alone anymore.  But—

            “I’m not religious,” she said bluntly.  “I didn’t come here on purpose.”

            “Yes?” he said, moving slowly down the aisle toward her.  “Fortunately for you, I’m not in the habit of worrying about religion when I see a woman who’s clearly in trouble and also freezing cold.”

            She felt herself blushing, like a chided kid in school.  “Sorry,” she mumbled.

            “Come on in,” he offered.  “And don’t apologize, I understand the sentiment.”

            “Please don’t try to convert me,” she said nervously.

            He chuckled.  “How’s this—I won’t try to convert you if you don’t roll your eyes if I use the word ‘God’ in a sentence unironically?”

            She found herself smiling, “Deal.”

            He led her past the altar and through a door at the back, into a cozy little room with a stove and refrigerator.  It was brightly lit, and a pair of yellow curtains with sunflowers on them hid the stormy night outside. 

            “Sit,” he said, and she raised an eyebrow at him.

            “I’m not a dog,” she said.

            “No, but you are close to collapsing.  I amend my phrase—please sit.”

            She was about to argue, but he pulled out the chair for her, and her legs wobbled of their own accord.  She sat down with a sigh of relief.

            “Tea?  Coffee?  Hot chocolate?”

            “Hot chocolate, please.  With lots of milk.”

            He glanced at her, and she realized that even in the warm kitchen she was shivering.  Her thin, soaked sweatshirt clung to her curves and abruptly she was suspicious of his motives again, even if priests weren’t traditionally interested in _women_.  She crossed her arms defensively across her front.  Well, it wasn’t as if she couldn’t handle herself if he tried anything.

            A smile quirked at the corner of his mouth, and he turned back to the stove top.  She expected him to start talking, but he was silent, concentrating at the task at hand, and they sat in semi-companionable silence, while the smell of heating milk trickled to her nostrils and calmed her.

            “Now,” he said, as he brought over a steaming cup of hot chocolate.  “Do you want to talk about it?”

            She was ready to say _no_ , when something else entirely came out of her mouth, “I—don’t know.”

            “Well, let’s just talk, then, shall we?  I’m Father Brian Young.  And you are—“

            She paused.  “You can call me Sally.”

            “Sally, then.  You seem pretty suspicious of the church.”

            She shook her head.  “I just haven’t been in one in—a while.”  _And the last time, I was retrieving a rather expensive holy relic_.  “And I don’t think they’d really approve of me.  My living isn’t strictly on the—right side of the law.”

            She saw him glance down at the v-necked scoop of her hoodie and tightened her arms about her.  “I’m not a prostitute,” she said.

            “Sorry,” he said.  “It’s just the first thing I think of when someone says something like that.  It seems to be one of the more common—occupations—for women in Gotham.”

            She snorted.  “Yeah.  Well—I’m not.  My sister—“ her voice broke, thinking about Maggie.  “My sister used to be a nun.”

            “Used to?”

            “Not a nun, exactly—I think she went to a convent school.  Maybe she was a nun.  We—we were separated as children.  And she—I got her husband killed.”

            “I see.”

            “Not on purpose—I don’t mean that.  Just—somebody from my life got into her life to—to get back at me for something.  And she—I can’t help her.  And now…”

            Her voice was shaking.  She had never meant to say anything about Maggie.  “Now my best f-f-friend…”

            Tears gathered at her eyes again.

            “It’s all right,” he said seriously, though he made no move to touch her.

            “God.”  She pinched her fingers with the bridge of her nose.  “Sorry.  I don’t have many people left but my two best friends…and she might die, or—I don’t know.  There was blood everywhere.”

            “I see,” he said seriously.  “What happened?”

            “Same basic thing that happened to my sister,” she said bitterly.  “Some guy in my life doesn’t like me—he used me to get back at an old boyfriend and I got back at him for it—and he wants to know where I am, so he takes her and…”  _Harley’s naked body, lying on her stomach on the bed, blood welling from deep incisions on the back of her knees, her left arm twisted and bent in two places it shouldn’t bend, her right hand nailed to the bed with a batarang, and when she turned her face, blood and a Glasgow grin where her cheek ought to be…_

            “You wouldn’t care,” she said wearily.  “We’re not…good people.  You’d say she deserved it—call her a ha-harlot, I suppose.”  She leaned her forehead against the table.  “God,” she whispered.  “I hope she was a harlot—I hope he didn’t rape her…”  She looked up defensively.  “I suppose you think that’s sinful of me.”

            He shook his head.  “No.  I may, objectively, think that it is wronger of _her_ to sleep with somebody than for her to be raped, but I understand why you want it to be true.  And even if she has made what I view to be mistakes, that doesn’t mean I think she deserved anything terrible to happen to her.”

            He finally did put out a gentle hand and squeezed her shoulder.  “I’ve seen many sins during my years in Gotham.  I would rather see a harmless sin than one that burns and consumes the victim.”

            She found herself smiling a little, but thinking of Harley wiped the smile back off her face.  “It’s my fault,” she said brokenly.

            “No,” he said quickly, almost harshly.  “It is _not_ your fault any more than it would be your friend’s fault if she were raped.  It is the fault of the person who hurt her.”

            Hot rage she had been trying not to feel swept through her heart.  “Maybe so,” she whispered.  “But you wouldn’t approve of how I feel about him.”

            “You probably want to kill him,” he said softly.  “It’s only natural.  He hurt your friend badly.”

            “I’ve killed people before,” she said flippantly.  “I _could_ kill him.  I _should_.”

            “Should?  Yes—it would stop him from hurting anyone else.  No—you’d only injure yourself more.”

            She sneered.  “I don’t believe in souls.”

            He shrugged.  “But you probably believe in a psyche, after all.  And I imagine you know how murder warps the psyche, don’t you?”

            He held her eyes with his own deep brown ones, and she was the one to look away first.

            “I’d better get going,” she said roughly.  “She might be out of surgery by now.”

            “All right,” he said.  “I hope she’s all right.”

            She got up, and he rose at the same time.  “Let me lend you an umbrella,” he said.

            She managed a watery smile.  “Thanks.”

            Five minutes later, as she paused at the exit to the church—“I’ll try not to kill him, Father.  Really.”

            He nodded, smiling.  “That’s good.”  She glanced back as she walked down the hill away from the church, the rain pounding heavily against the old umbrella.  “And Selina—“ he called after her, and she stopped, the name thudding into her skull like a club. 

            “Wh-what?”

            “Be careful!  I believe strange forces rise against you, Selina Kyle, and you are more vulnerable than ever.”

            The door swung shut, punctuating his last word, and she stood staring back until it occurred to her that she desperately needed to get back to the hospital to find out how Harley was doing.


	3. Poisoned Ivy

Ivy hated the smell of hospitals.  The disinfectant and lack of any sort of organic smell made her feel almost physically ill.  The fact that she was exhausted wasn’t helping either.  She had left Hush trussed up in five different kinds of exotic vine, with the promise that the police would arrive imminently.  Not that Ivy liked relying on the police, but with her best friend bleeding and unconscious, she didn’t feel that she had much choice.

            Now she was sitting in the waiting room of the hospital.  She hadn’t slept all night, preferring to stare out at the growing thunderstorm and wonder when Catwoman would get back.  Sometime toward one in the morning, an exhausted-looking Selina had crawled back through the window, soaked and trembling.  Ivy rolled her eyes, but moved across the seats to allow her to lie down.  She had been asleep ever since, and Ivy had watched her, with a strange feeling inside her chest.

            Her thoughts were all tangled up.  She hadn’t really wanted to associate with the Cat—even associating with Harley was not something she had been one-hundred-percent on board with.  She didn’t _like_ people.  She found them complicated, domineering, selfish creatures.  Yet, somehow, Harley had crawled into her skin and become—close to her.  She hesitated to use the word friend, because she didn’t really understand all the implications.  But Harley’s childish pleasure at the simplest things was—curiously refreshing.

            And from Harls to Catwoman.  Selina Kyle was a whole different kettle of fish, though doubtless the woman would prefer to be eating them than to be compared to them.  She wrinkled her nose and shifted slightly away from the limp figure draped across the waiting room seats.  Catwoman’s hair was matted to her head, and her face was pressed hard into the seat.  A rivulet of drool ran from her mouth, unless it was just more rainwater.  Ivy wasn’t averse to getting wet in the normal run of things, but Selina like this was— _animal_.  Foreign.  Little whimpering noises kept escaping from her lips, and occasionally she moved her arms and legs as Ivy had occasionally seen a sleeping stray do.

            And yet.  She looked at Selina, and she couldn’t feel the revulsion that only a few months ago she would have felt for anything fully grown and human.  She felt a strange rush of relief that Selina was here with her.  That Selina was here for Harley, too.  Ivy massaged her forehead.  She was clearly getting soft in her old age.

            Dawn began to break outside the window, the sun peeking out from behind the gray clouds which were slowly disappearing.  Ivy lifted her face to it, reveling in the golden glow.  Despite her lack of sleep, she felt revived and at ease beneath the sun.

            A door opened and a nurse came out.  In her stuporous, half-asleep state, she didn’t even register that the woman was moving toward her until she was already standing in front of her.

            “You came in with Miss Quinzel?” the woman asked.

            “Doctor,” Ivy corrected absentmindedly.

            “I’m sorry?”

            “Doctor Quinzel.”

            “Oh.  Well—“

            Ivy’s mind suddenly grasped what the nurse was doing here.  “Is she all right?” she asked.

            “She’s doing better.  She’s not in any danger anymore, though she is very weak.  She lost a lot of blood.”

            “Oh.”  Ivy let herself collapse back against the seat.  “Oh,” she said again, and suddenly she gasped a deep breath of the disgusting hospital air, and her stomach was heaving.  She dropped to her knees, putting her hands over her mouth, trying not to let herself throw up.

            “There, there,” the nurse said, patting her on the shoulder.  Ivy wanted to shrink away from the human contact, but she couldn’t do anything but heave her shoulders and realize with every cell in her body that Harley was all right.

            “There is one thing,” the nurse said awkwardly.

            Ivy looked up at her.  She had never been good at reading people, but the expression on the woman’s face was grave.  “What is it?”

            “Well—the muscles and tendons at the back of her knees were cut.  The surgeon did his best, but—there’s a chance she’ll never regain full functionality in her legs.”

            Blinding rage pulsed through Ivy.  She clenched her fists so hard that she felt her nails break through the flesh of her palm.  _There’s a chance she’ll never regain full functionality in her legs._  

 _Hush,_ Ivy whispered to herself.  _I will break you._

            “Can I see her?” she asked.

            The nurse nodded.  “Not for long, though—what about your friend?”

            Ivy bit her lip, looking at Selina.  The woman was white to her lips, which were still bluish with cold, and her eyes were sunken in hollows of exhaustion.  She needed to sleep.  “She can see Harley when she wakes up,” she said.

            The nurse nodded.  “Come with me,” she said.

            Harley looked very small and pale in the hospital bed, with her blond hair out of its usual pigtails and her hands laid gently on the coverlet, the right one covered in bandages.  White bandages dwarfed her head as well, covering the whole of the right half of her face.  Her left arm was in a sling.  She blinked her eyes as Ivy approached.

            “Hiya, Red,” she said weakly, grimacing in pain as she tugged on the corner of her mouth.

            “Don’t talk, Harls,” Ivy said soothingly.  “You’re okay now.”

            “Why didn’t anybody tell me Brucie was Hush?  Or Batman?”

            Ivy shook her head and patted Harley’s hand.  “Nobody knew he was Batman.”  As she spoke, Ivy suddenly realized the overwhelming implications.  Everyone in Gotham knew—or would know, in a few hours—that Bruce Wayne was Batman, and everyone in Gotham who didn’t know about Hush would believe he had tortured an innocent (well, presumed innocent) girl in his bed.  This surely promised to be interesting, at the very least.

            Harley moaned a little.  “My legs hurt,” she complained.

            “Shhh,” Ivy said soothingly.  “Just be quiet and go to sleep.  Everything’s going to be fine.”  Harley’s eyelashes fluttered and closed, and Ivy wondered again at herself for letting this _human_ sneak inside her heart.  But Harls was so vulnerable and child-like most of the time, and Ivy quite liked children.

            The nurse came back in the door.  “Is time up?” Ivy asked.

            “Er…actually, there’s a phone call, ma’am, and we thought perhaps you might take it—he’s demanding to speak to the patient, and we’ve tried to explain that she isn’t capable of speaking on the telephone right now, but—“

            “Who’s calling?”

            The nurse looked miserable.  “Well…he’s threatening to set the hospital on fire unless we put her on the line.”

            Ivy rolled her eyes.  “Oh lord.  I’ll take it.”

            “Thank you!” the other woman gasped in relief.  “This way please.”

            When Ivy took the phone, all she heard on the other end was laughter, low, grating, unending laughter that made her hackles rise.

            “Clown!” she snapped.  “Stop that!”

            “Excuse me, operator?” came the amused voice from the other end of the line.  “Could you please connect me to Harleen Quinzel?”

            “She _can’t talk now_ , Clown!” Ivy shouted irritably.   This was all his fault, she raged irrationally.  If Harley hadn’t been trying to get over her eminently unsuitable boyfriend, she wouldn’t be in this situation.

            “She can’t…?  Don’t be silly, Poison Oak.  Harls can always talk—whether or not I want her to.”

            “I really don’t know how to tell you this, Joker.  Oh, wait, yes I do— _fuck off_ ,” Ivy snarled.

            The Joker’s voice dropped into a syrupy tone of voice.  “You know, I would—I really would—but I’m bored.  I want to talk to Harls.  Now, put her on the phone or this cactus gets it.”

            Ivy winced.  “If you would listen for a minute,” she growled.  “You would realize that we aren’t putting Harley on the line because she is _too injured to talk on the phone._   She just got out of surgery.”

            “Sur…ger…y?  Oh, this is gonna be good.  If she can’t talk, you will.  Now…WHAT HAPPENED?!” snapped the Joker.

            Ivy sighed sharply.  “Well, her face and hand have been carved up, her left arm is broken in three places, and she may never walk again because that monster cut through the tendons in the back of her legs.”

            There was silence on the other end of the phone.  After a long moment, the Joker spoke again.  “…who?  TELL ME WHO, YOU CHLOROPHYLL-COLORED CU—“

            “Hush, masquerading as Bruce Wayne.  He captured her and wanted to know where Catwoman was.  She wouldn’t tell him.”

            “All right, let me put this on my shopping list…eggs, Hush, hyena food, and Catwoman.  Got it.”  He paused for a moment as if he were scribbling something down.

            “ _Don’t you take this out on Selina_!” raged Ivy.  “She has _nothing_ to do with it!”

            “Nothing?” the Joker whispered, sudden, disarming sweetness evident in his voice.  “Why, of course she had nothing to do with it.  And you, of course, also had nothing to do with it.  Of course Harls went out on her own!  I am sure neither you nor the feline had been telling her to ‘empower’ herself.  I am sure she wasn’t doing this to please you at all.”  He laughed.  “Now that I’ve got all that out of the way, listen.  My girl was raped, then cut up.  And nobody roughs her up but me, got it?  Maybe I’ll ask her, first.  But I’ve got a pretty good idea that she was trying to fit in with the girls.”

            It hadn’t even occurred to Ivy that Harley might have been raped, and it was as if a stone had dropped into the pit of her stomach.  She choked slightly before answering, “I don’t know—if she was raped.  She hasn’t been conscious enough to tell us.”

            “Oh, you hadn’t even realized, huh?”  the Joker purred.  “Of course it could have been rape.  And that’s pretty upsetting to me, plant-lady.  I’m upset.  Do you remember what happened the LAST time I was upset?  Now.  Where.  Is.  Hush?  I have a present for him.”

            “I left him at Wayne Manor.  I suppose the police have him by now.”

            “Ahhh, so I’ll be paying a visit to dear old Commissioner Gordon.  He and I go way back—he should be happy to see me.  Oh, one more thing, though…if Hush is Bruce Wayne…and Bruce Wayne is Batman…then we have a problem.  Because Hush is not Batman.  Not by a long shot.  Where did he stash the real Wayne brat?”

            “How should I know?” Ivy yelled.  She wasn’t sure she had ever heard the Joker this upset before.  Well, no wonder.  Something he considered to be _his_ intimate property had been played with and broken by someone who should never have been allowed to get near her.

            There was a long pause on the other end of the phone.  “Hrrm.  Tell kiddo not to worry.  Her Mister J is on the case.  Time to silence Hush,” said the Joker; there was a click and then a dial-tone.  Ivy stared angrily at the phone before slamming it down.  She went back into the waiting room, where Selina was still sleeping the sleep of the dead.

            About an hour later, someone came by bearing a large bouquet of flowers, who disappeared into Harley’s room.  There was a squeal of delight from inside, and Selina finally blinked her eyes open with a start.  Ivy started massaging her forehead.  She had a pretty good idea who the flowers were from, particularly given the mix of white, red, and _green_ roses.

            Selina sat up slowly, stretching and blinking as if she didn’t know where she was.  She suddenly stopped, midway through a yawn, and turned to Ivy with a gasp.  “How is she?” she asked.

            “She’s out of danger,” Ivy said dully, and watched as Selina’s eyes closed, and a gasp of relief rattled through her entire frame.  She covered her face with her hands, her shoulders shaking as if she were starting to cry.  Ivy had no idea what to do, but fortunately, Selina took another long, deep breath and then managed to raise her head. 

            “Oh thank god,” she said forcefully.  She began to laugh, and suddenly she leaned forward and put her arms around Ivy, still shaking.  Ivy stiffened, and then found that somehow she was relieved to have someone touching her.  It was almost comfortable, but she thought of Harley’s legs and forced herself to break away.

            “She might not be able to walk,” she said stiffly, turning away from Selina.  “He hamstrung her.”

            “What,” Selina said blankly.

            “The tendons and muscles in the back of her lugs.  He _cut_ them.  Snip-snip.”

            “Oh god.  I—is she awake?”

            “Sounds like it,” Ivy replied softly.  “She just received some flowers.”

            Selina shut her eyes.  “So the Joker…”

            “He called earlier.  He wasn’t happy.”

            “Never mind him now.  I need to see Harley.  I just—I really need to know if she—if he forced her—“

            Ivy swallowed.  “Yes.  That’s—let’s see if we can see her.”

            The nurse let them in.  Harley was lying in bed with her eyes properly open this time, fingering a green rose with the bandaged fingers of her right hand.

            “Hiya, Kitty-cat!  Hi, Red,” she greeted them.

            “Hey, Harls.”  Selina sat down on the bed next to her.  “How are you?”

            Harley wrinkled her nose.  “I feel okay.  I think they’re pumping me full of happy-juice.  It’s kinda weird.  But look!”  She waved the rose wildly at Selina.  “Look what Mistah J sent me!  And there was a card, too!”

            Ivy frowned.  “Harley, you can’t just go running back to him—“

            Harley looked away.  “I tried to listen to ya, Red, I really did.  I tried to go out on a proper date with somebody who wasn’t Mistah J—“

            “Harls,” Selina said quickly.  “He—he didn’t force you, did he?”

            Harley looked up at her, and for a moment cold crept through Ivy’s stomach at the crushed, battered look in her blue eyes, but then she shook her head in a quick, sudden gesture, before her eyes filled with tears and she started to cry. 

            “I wish he’d raped me,” she sobbed.

            “Oh—no, Harley—“ Selina leaned forward, touching her on the head, and Ivy found herself kneeling by the bed.

            “I do!  I _do_!  It’s all _my_ fault for abandoning Mistah J.  I _deserve_ this!”

            “You don’t deserve a _thing_ ,” Selina said forcefully.  “Harley, you were just trying to have some fun, that’s _all_.  There’s nothing wrong with that!”

            Ivy pursed her lips and spoke as if she were spitting out a nasty taste.  “He called, Harley.”

            Her blue eyes widened.  “He—he did?”

            Ivy sighed.  “Right after you were out of surgery, when you were still unconscious.  He was mad as hell.  He told you not to worry.”

            “Oh!”  Harley gasped, burying her face in the green rose.  “ _See_ , Red?  He really _does_ care!”

            “I wouldn’t go that far,” Ivy said caustically.  “Harley…”

            She was interrupted by the re-entrance of the nurse.  “Excuse me,” she said.  “Can I speak with one of you?”

            Ivy looked at Selina’s face, then patted her shoulder.  “I’ll go,” she said.  “You stay with Harls.”

            She followed the nurse out into the hallway.  “What is it?” she asked.

            “I’ve got the police commissioner on the phone this time, asking to speak to one of you girls,” said the nurse.

            “Oh god,” Ivy mumbled, rubbing her hands through her hair.  “Fine, I’ll be right there.”

            She picked up the phone and took real pleasure in saying, “Poison Ivy speaking.”

            “Hello, Miss Isley,” said Jim Gordon’s voice.

            “Listen, Commish, if this is about the Clown, I had nothing to do with—“

            “It’s not,” Gordon said sharply.  “It’s about Hush.  He’s escaped.”


	4. Birth of the Magdalene

Father Brian Young watched the sun rise from beneath the dark clouds.  He had made himself a cup of coffee, but it grew cold between his fingers, and he couldn’t make himself drink it.  Should he have spoken to the Kyle girl?  He wasn’t sure.

            “Dear God,” he said seriously, lifting his eyes to the slanting rays of golden sunlight which fought their way past the dark clouds.  “Please guide me in this treacherous time.  I do not know which is the correct path.  I do not know if—“

            “Father?” called a quavery voice.

            He sighed, clasped his hands together for a moment longer, and then rose from the table.  “I’m coming, Maggie!”

            Entering the little study, he thought that if it were possible, the girl in the makeshift cot had grown even thinner.  She seemed dwarfed by the striped blue pajamas she wore.  Deep shadows beneath her eyes gave her face a hollow, skull-like appearance.  “Father,” she whispered, reaching toward him with a boney hand.  “I had the nightmare again.”

            He sat on the bed beside her.  “Don’t worry, Maggie,” he said, gently caressing her hair.  “None of it is real.”

            _Am I telling the truth, or am I lying to the child?_

            He didn’t know.  When he had first seen her, Magdalene Kyle had been a little girl in a convent school where he taught the chorus.  She was a quiet, studious child, always a little out of step with the others.  She often read a book while the others were chattering amongst themselves.  One day he approached her.

            “What are you reading?” he asked, and she flinched.

            “The Bible,” she said seriously.

            “That’s very pious of you,” he said with a smile.

            “I—I don’t always read the Bible,” she said softly.

            “I’m not judging your reading habits,” he answered.  “I was just interested.  Making conversation.”

            “Oh,” she said, and this time she gave him a rather weak, surprised smile.  “I do like the Bible,” she said.  “The words are very pretty.  I don’t always understand it, though.”

            “You’re not the only one,” he said with a laugh.  “I wouldn’t worry about it.  The word of God is not something that one very young human can expect to comprehend.”

            “I like to try though,” she said seriously, looking at him with her big, dark eyes.

            “Well, then I’m very proud of you.”

            She began to hang around after chorus while he was packing up his things, occasionally asking him a question in her small, serious voice.  One day, she seemed especially nervous, pacing up and down the room and unable to say anything.

            “What’s the matter, Maggie?” he asked her.

            She looked up at him as if she hadn’t seen him properly until that moment, then swallowed.  “It’s my sister’s birthday,” she said.

            “Isn’t that a good thing?”

            Maggie looked at the floor.  “I—I haven’t seen her in a very long time,” she said.  “You see, I’m adopted.  And Sally wasn’t.”

            “Oh,” was all he said.

            The story came out over more sessions of impromptu therapy.  Maggie didn’t remember much about her sister, or her parents.  She knew that either her parents had died, or that the siblings had been taken away from them, but not when or why. 

            “I was very young,” she said, in a turn of phrase that seemed far too old for a child of her age.  “I just remember that Sally had a stuffed kitten and I had a doll that we used to play with together.  Sally loved kitties.”

            Sally—or Selina.  Selina and Magdalene Kyle, both of whom had presumably retained the names that their birth parents had given them.  A funny combination of Greek paganism and Christian grace.

            “Did you know that Selina is a form of Selene?” Father Young asked her.  “She was the goddess of the moon in Greek mythology.”  He gave her a book of Greek myths to read, and she devoured them and chattered for hours about Selina.  She was interested in her own namesake as well, but in a less devouring way.

            “I’m glad that she was really a good woman,” she said.  “I know people say she wasn’t, but I know that she was, and that’s all I need to know inside.”

            “You’re very wise not to care what other people say,” he told her.

            But she cared about Selina.  It was almost an obsession.  She kept her sister’s birthday, and she sometimes showed him letters she had written to the other girl.  She talked about the things she did during the day, talked about God’s love, talked about how wonderful her parents were and how much she hoped Sally liked her parents as well.  “But if you don’t,” she wrote at one point.  “You just have to write and tell me, and I’ll be right there and I’ll take you away.  I know Mom and Dad would love to have you, too.  It’s my turn to protect you now.”

            “I tried to send them to her when I was littler,” she told him, one day, a few years later, studying for her exams.  She was already talking about taking her novitiate when she turned eighteen.  “But I didn’t know where to address them, so they always came back.  Mom and Dad eventually talked me out of it.”

            “She used to protect you,” he prompted.

            She smiled, a faraway smile.  “I don’t really remember much.  I just remember someone yelling and threatening, and then Selina steps between us and yells back.  I felt so safe when I was around her.  I would still know her anywhere, but I’ve never seen her since.”

            It was three days after she started the novitiate that he had come in early one morning and found her kneeling in the church at dawn.  Her face was white, and her hands were shaking.

            “Maggie!” he exclaimed, running to her.  “Maggie, what is it?”

            She looked up at him and shook her head.  Her lips were swollen and bleeding.

            “What happened to your lips?” he asked in concern.

            “I bit them,” she mumbled.

            “You bit them!  Maggie—what happened?”

            She shook her head, getting up slowly.  Her legs trembled, and he caught her before she fell.  “I—nothing.  I just—I’ve had a shock.”

            “Is your family all right?”

            She looked at him for a moment with blank incomprehension, and then she began to laugh.  It grew from a little giggle into an uproarious guffaw and then slipped into sobs as he held her and rocked her back and forth.

            She stayed in the novitiate for two years before she met a man at the library, whom she fell madly in love with.  Father Young had almost expected it to happen; she had been such a lonely child, grasping for shreds of affection from everyone, so when she came to him to ask him if she was abandoning her god, he reassured her.

            “Of course not, Maggie,” he said, stroking her hair gently.  “Not everyone is called for a life in the church.  He’s a good, God-fearing man, I take it?”

            She smiled and laughed a little.  “Oh, yes, Father.  He wouldn’t even hold my hand until we started talking about getting engaged.  I do love him.”

            “Love is always a good thing, Maggie, no matter what.  God wants you to feel love.”

            “I’m glad,” she said quietly.

            She and her husband moved away, and Father Young went on a two-year sojourn to Africa.  They corresponded via letters for a long time.  When the letters stopped coming, he was unable to find anything else out—his letters were sent back and the phone number was listed as disconnected.  He had never heard from her again until three weeks ago.

            It had been a stormy night—Gotham was certainly having an unseasonable number of storms this year.  At first he had thought the insistent pounding on the door was the thunder, but soon he had recognized it for what it was and hurried to open it.

            “Sanctuary—please,” gasped the figure outside the door, collapsing into the church.  She had a blanket swathed about her shoulders and her wet, dark hair hid her features from view.

            “It’s all right, my child,” he said, kneeling beside her.  For a moment she just lay there, shuddering.  Then, quite suddenly, her head snapped up, and her eyes locked with his.  She was smiling slightly, and her tongue ran swiftly over her cracked, dried lips. 

            “Lo—there will be blood,” she whispered.  “Eve shall rot and the cat be vanquished.  This I have seen.”

            He recognized her.  “Maggie?” he said.  “Maggie Kyle?”

            Her eyes widened.  “F-f-father Young?”  She grasped his collar, buried her face in his front, and began to sob.  “Oh, Father.  _Father!_   Help me—please—“

            He held her, rubbing soothing circles on her back.  “Shhh, shhh, there now, my child.  It’s all right.  You’re safe.”

            “The angels,” she gasped.  “The angels and the _cat_.”

            There was something off about her, off in a way that chilled and frightened him, though he didn’t show it.  He found her a pair of pajamas and dried her off with a towel and gave her some hot soup and hot milk, but she wouldn’t take the milk.  When he offered it to her, she shrank back and whispered, “Cats drink milk.”

            “I’m sorry,” he said, and got her some hot apple cider instead.

            He put her to bed and she slept for fourteen hours; when she woke, she was listless and confused.  Her face glistened with sweat, and her eyes were glassy as if she were feverish, but her temperature stayed constant at ninety-eight point three.  In between her babblings, he could comprehend only fragments.  Her husband was dead, and she had been in a mental home for some time.

            “Then the angels came,” she said fearfully.  “They talk to me at night, Father.  They want me to help them.  They say that I’m not Eve, I’m the Magdalene.”

            He comforted her and told her to sleep.  She talked ceaselessly of the cat-demon that had taken over her sister.  Apparently she had met Selina once more, but it hadn’t been a happy reunion.  During one of her more lucid periods, she passed him a soaked, water-warped picture, of a smiling woman with short dark hair.  “That’s Sally now,” she said.  “Isn’t she pretty?”

            She seemed to have a phobia and an extreme hatred of cats.  He had to stop her at one point from viciously attacking a stray that had wandered into the church.  She had taken up a brass candlestick from the altar and was raising it over her head when he entered.

            “Maggie!” he cried in horror.  “Don’t!”  He caught her arm, and the cat ran off with a surprised meowl.  For a moment, when she turned, he thought she was going to attack him as well.  Her face seemed devoid of all humanity, perfectly calm and perfectly immobile, her dark eyes hooded, her white features wiped clean.  Then, a spark of recognition dawned, and her fingers relaxed on the candlestick, which dropped to the floor with an almighty crash.

            “Father?” she said in an agonized whisper.  “It was a cat.”

            “Yes, Maggie, but I’ll see that it doesn’t come back.  Come back to bed, now, there’s a good girl.”

            Then, last night—Selina Kyle.  Arriving out of nowhere.  He had recognized her instantly from the photograph.  And he’d thought about taking her to Maggie, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so.  Maggie was so painfully unstable; there was no telling how she’d react.  And with what Selina had said, if she received vitriol from her sister now, she would be badly hurt.  At least he knew that she was in Gotham, and with any luck he’d be able to track her down if he needed to.

            He had been a little afraid to reintroduce the sisters, as well.  Maggie wasn’t getting any better; if anything, she was getting worse.  She muttered in a low voice about angels and about cleansing her sister.  At first he had thought it was just residual madness from her departure from sanity.  But lately—he wasn’t so sure.  More than once he had thought he’d heard voices coming from the room when he was absent—deep voices, voices Maggie couldn’t possibly be making.

            On at least one occasion, he had seen a light under her door—but when he’d entered, it had been pitch dark, and she had been sound asleep.  And her neverending talk of ‘angels’ was beginning to unnerve him.  Once he had asked to meet the angels, but Maggie had had such a hysterical fit at the thought that he had given it up.  His warning to Selina had been brought on by his darkening thoughts, and perhaps it had been a little too melodramatic, but…

            He looked down at the girl in the bed.  “Maggie,” he said slowly, and she nodded.  She seemed relatively lucid now, if child-like and worn with pain.

            “Yes, Father?”

            “Can’t you tell me something about the nightmare?”

            Her face screwed up.  “Do I have to?”

            He patted her shoulder gently.  “Of course not, my child.  I’m just trying to figure out the best way to help you.”

            She bit her lip.  “Promise you won’t tell anybody?”

            He frowned.  “I—can’t promise that, Maggie.  I promise I won’t tell anyone unless it is absolutely necessary.  How’s that?”

            She sighed sharply.  “They’re so beautiful,” she said.  “They have golden wings and golden hair and golden eyes.  They don’t wear clothes but that’s all right because they don’t have…well…”

            He nodded.  “I understand.”

            “They’re so bright, it’s hard to look at them.  They all talk at once, and their voice is so gorgeous that I want to cry.  I—I forget who I am, Father.  I’m their Magdalene, and I’m going to lead them.  We’re going to cleanse the world of Eve’s sin, you see.”

            “I see,” he said.  He stroked her hair.

            “I’ve got to save Sally,” she said.  “But I’m afraid I’ll have to kill her to save her, because the demon has got her.  Then I’ll go to hell, but she’ll go to heaven—won’t she?  Oh, Father, won’t she?”

            He felt a sickening, sinking feeling in his stomach.  “Maggie, you mustn’t kill anyone.  Your sister loves you—“

            “My _sister_ is a _thief_ ,” Maggie spat.  “The Cat has taken over her _mind_!  She’s a sinful, blasphemous _Eve_!  And Eve will be _cleansed_!”  Her voice deepened as she spoke, her eyes lighting from within with a frightening fire.

            “Maggie!”  He took her by the shoulder.  “Maggie—you are a human!  Humans cannot judge others.  ‘Judge not lest ye be judged.’”

            “We are not human,” Maggie whispered.  “We are Hayyoth.”

            Then she began to laugh.


	5. Harley and Babs

            Harley swam slowly back to consciousness.  Ivy was nodding in a chair by her bed.  Harley tried to track what had happened, but everything seemed blurred and strange in her head.  She looked down at her hands, one of which lay motionless on the coverlet.  A clear I.V. ran from it.  The other hand was in a sling over her chest.

            Things began to spin slowly back into her head.  She’d been talking to Cat, and her legs had started to hurt; Selina had called for a nurse, and the nurse had done something to the I.V., and everything had gotten very blurry and nice.  Harley winced.  Morphine, probably.  Her left arm was beginning to ache again.  It was looking as if she’d be laid up for a while.  Ugh.  How boring.

            She glanced to the side of the bed and caught sight of the big bouquet of roses; it sent a happy thrill through her system.  Mister J really did care, no matter _what_ Ivy and Cat said!  He’d told her not to worry, and he’d sent her _flowers_!  Harley giggled happily to herself and then stopped, feeling tears pricking at her eyes.  She didn’t deserve his love.  He probably thought she’d been raped, the way Ivy and Cat had.  But she hadn’t.  She _hadn’t_.  She didn’t deserve Mister J.

            She started sniffling, but before she could start to cry, the door opened, and Selina entered.

            “Harley!” she exclaimed.  “You’re awake!”

            Harley sniffled again.  “Yeah.  My legs hurt.”

            “I’ll get the nurse.”

            Harley suddenly remembered something that Hush had said.  “Wait—Cat—“

            Selina was at her side in an instant.  “Yes, Harls?”

            Harley bit her lip.  “Am I gonna be able to walk at all?  Ever?”

            Cat paused for a beat, then said, “Of course you are, Harley.  Why would you think—“

            But Harley had seen the look of horrified pity pass across Catwoman’s face before she’d hidden it.  “I’m not, am I?” she said, beginning to sniffle again.  “I’m gonna be a cripple, like he said.”

            “No—no—“

            But Harley was already crying, loud sobs tearing out of her throat.  “I’m gonna be a _cripple_ , and Mistah J will hate me!  It’s all my _fault_!”

            Another hand was placed gently on her head.  “Harley,” Ivy’s voice said.  “That’s idiotic.  Nothing that has happened has been your fault.”

            “But it _is_ ,” Harley moaned.  “I went _home_ with him.  I _slept_ with him.”

            “And if you hadn’t, he would have taken you anyway, because he wanted to find _me_ ,” Catwoman said.  “It’s our fault for not getting to you soon enough, if anything.”

            “It ain’t your fault.  It’s my fault for being stupid.  If I’d tried to get away, I could’ve.  Or if I’d just left him to get mugged.”

            “Harley.”  Catwoman took her face between both her hands.  “If I’d told you that he was Hush, you never would have gone off with him.  It _isn’t_ your fault.”

            But Harley couldn’t stop.  Wail after wail tore itself from her throat and, without a good hand to cover her eyes and nose, tears and snot began to drip down her face.  She cried so hard that she was suddenly gulping for breath and unable to catch it, and she began to choke.

            “Harley, calm down,” Ivy said.  “Selina—can you go get a nurse?”

            “I wanna die!” Harley wailed.  “I don’t want to live!”

            “Harley…”

            Before Cat could reach the door, there was a knock, and the nurse came in.  Harley sniffed and managed to stop the wailing sobs.

            “I’m sorry,” the nurse said.  “It’s just that the police commissioner is here, and he wants to speak with Miss Kyle and Miss Isley.”

            “Well, Miss Isley and Miss Kyle don’t want to leave Miss Quinn by herself,” Ivy said shortly.

            “Actually…” the nurse said.

            “I was hoping to talk to her,” said a clear, female voice from behind her.  The nurse stood aside, and Harley gulped in surprise as a familiar red-haired figure rolled her way into the room.  “Babs!” she exclaimed.

            Barbara Gordon carefully wiped her glasses off on her shirt.  “Hello, Harley,” she said.  She looked at Ivy and Cat.  “Dad really wants to talk to you.  Don’t worry, I’ll look after her.”

            Catwoman hesitated, then nodded, before moving toward the door.  Ivy, however, bent over Oracle as she went by.  “Harley is hurt,” she said, almost hissing.  “If you hurt her more—“

            Barbara raised an eyebrow.  “You might not think it, but Dad and I are trying to help you.  _Despite_ the ruckus the Joker has been causing.”

            “He’s worried about her,” Ivy said steadily, and the words still made a thrill go through Harley’s heart.

            “Which is the only reason all of our resources aren’t devoted to dealing with him for the moment.  Now go talk to Dad like a good little tree.”

            Ivy snorted and followed Cat, and Harley was left alone with Barbara.  She sniffled and almost collapsed back into sobs, but she didn’t want to be _rude_.  The other woman gave her a stern look from over her glasses, then bent over and fetched a laptop from somewhere.

            “Harley,” she said, more gently than Harley had expected.  Harley sniffed again and looked up at her.  “I heard about your injuries.”  She put out a hand and brushed Harley’s fingers.  “Don’t worry too much yet.  The doctor says there’s a chance your tendons will reknit properly, still.  You’ve got remarkable stamina, thanks to your friend Isley.”

            Harley sniffed again and managed a watery smile, which went off her face as she looked at the wheelchair the other girl sat in.  “B-babs,” she stammered.  “I’m r-real sorry.”

            Barbara gave a sharp sigh.  “I can’t say I’m enamored of your boyfriend,” she said thinly, and Harley wisely bit back a remark about how wonderful Mister J was.  “But,” Babs continued, “You and the other two have been playing the game lately—no breaking laws, no killing or hurting people.”

            Harley nodded sadly.  “I tried to get over him,” she mumbled.  “It just didn’t work.”

            “Bad luck,” Barbara said.  “Listen—there’s something you should know.”

            “Uh-huh?”

            “Hush has escaped custody.  We don’t know where he is.  Batman’s on the lookout in case he resurfaces.”

            Harley eyed her blankly.  “But Brucie ain’t—“

            “You _do_ know, then.”

            Harley gave her a little nod.  “Kinda hard to help noticing when you’re getting cut up with a batarang.”

            “True.  Well, it didn’t matter much anyway.  It’s being plastered all over the papers anyway.  What you have to understand is that right now—somebody is under the mantle of Batman, until he gets back.”

            “A temp?”

            Barbara snorted.  “Sure.  The point is, he’s watching out for Hush, and we’re keeping your room under guard.”  
            “Okay.”

            “There’s something else, though.  Does the name ‘Eve’ mean anything to you?”

            Harley shook her head.  “Not unless you count Hebrew school for a year; I think we went over _Genesis_.”

            Barbara chewed her lip and typed a few things into her laptop.  “Okay.  Well—if you come across anybody talking about Eve, can I get you to tell me?”

            “Sure, I guess.  I figure I’m not really going anywhere for a while, though, am I?”

            “Still.”

            “What’s this about?”

            “It might be nothing.  It’s just that we’ve gotten a couple of threatening phone calls down at headquarters, talking about Eve.”

            “I still don’t get what that’s got to do with me.”

            “The most recent one we got matched the vocal patterns of Thomas Elliot.  Hush.”

            “Wait, _what_?”  Harley tried to sit up straighter and sat back with a moan as pain crashed through her arm.

            Barbara pushed a hand through her bushy red hair, and Harley suddenly noticed that it was sticking up more than she would have expected, and there were dark circles under her eyes.

            “Don’t you get loads of kooks calling you guys like this?  What’s such a big deal about this ‘Eve’ thing, even if Hush _is_ involved?”

            Barbara shook her head.  “It’s the kind of thing a serial killer would do, but it’s been different people every time.  And they always say the same thing.  I don’t know.  Batman thinks it could be the start of something.”

            “But what’s it got to do with _me_?” Harley insisted.

            Barbara shook her head again.  “Maybe nothing, Harley.  We’re just being safe.”

            Harley leaned back.  “Mistah J will keep me safe,” she said positively.

            “Maybe he will,” Barbara said caustically.  “And maybe something worse will happen to you this time than a badly broken arm, a hamstringing, and several bad scars.”

            Harley gulped and shut up.  “Sorry,” she mumbled, tears springing easily to her eyes again.  “I’m not used to the police helpin’ me.”

            “I know, Harley,” Barbara said calmly.  “And you’re not going to like what I’m going to ask next.”

            “Oh no,” Harley groaned.  “What?”

            “I need you tell me exactly what happened to you yesterday evening with Thomas Elliot.”

            Just the sound of his name again made her grind her teeth.  _But he didn’t get to Cat!  I saw to that!_   A wave of pain ran through her again, and she felt limp.  “’Kay,” she whispered.

            “In your own time, of course.”

            “R-right.  Well, I was out shopping—“

            “You’ve got plenty of money, lately, haven’t you?”  Harley felt her heart thud heavily in her chest, but when she looked up, she saw that Barbara was smiling slightly.  “You know,” she continued.  “I did a favor for a friend recently, putting together a list of a certain person’s assets.  Did you happen to perform a similar favor?”

            “Uh, yeah,” Harley giggled.  “I got some quick cash out of it.”

            “Of course.  So, you were out shopping.”

            “Yeah.  I was out shoppin’ and I saw some guys decide to mug Bruce Wayne.  I figured since he went to bat for me at my parole hearing, I owed him something, you know?  So I beat ‘em off, and he asked me out to dinner, and—“ she swallowed.  “—and Ivy and Cat keep tellin’ me to get back into the dating pool and stuff, so I said okay.  He took me back to his place, and, and—“ she swallowed, tears starting to drip down her face again. 

            “Did he force you?” Barbara asked gently.

            Harley burst into tears.  “N-n-no!” she wailed.  “Everybody keeps askin’ me that!  I wish he’d forced me!  I wish he’d _k-k-killed_ me!  I hate myself!”

            Barbara frowned.  “I’m sorry, Harley,” she said quietly.  “What happened after that?”

            Harley gulped.  She was exhausted, too tired to cry anymore.  “I fell asleep.  When I woke up, he pinned me to the bed and asked me where Cat was.”  She kept talking, with every so often a gentle prompt from Barbara.  She felt as if her mouth were moving without her letting it.  Tears started dripping down her face again, as she described what Hush had done to her.  She choked up over describing what he’d done to her legs, and again, when she recalled what he’d said about Mister J not wanting a crippled sidekick.  Barbara took notes, and occasionally patted her hand.  Eventually, she thanked Harley, and the nurse came back in, and injected something into the I.V. bag, and Harley found herself spinning gently away into darkness again.

            She woke with a scream to sharp pain in her mouth.  Blinking her eyes open, the room swam slowly into focus.

            “Hush, Miss Quinn,” the figure above her in the bed said with a low laugh.  “Hush now, little Eve.”

  


	6. The Sister Who Walks in Moonlight

            Selina Kyle threw herself with a moan onto the couch in front of the TV.  She was exhausted after her night out; the few hours of sleep she’d snatched in the waiting room of the hospital really hadn’t cut it.  She ached all over, and she was still desperately worried about Harley, but she needed some rest.

            But no sooner had she reached for the remote and flicked the TV on than there was a knock on the door.  She groaned, considering just ignoring it.  It was probably just Ed Nigma, coming around to ask about some stupid case he was working on.  Or maybe the Joker was making the rounds, though she wouldn’t have expected him to show at their place.  The knock sounded again, soft and precise.

  1. “I’m COMING!”  Seriously, what did they want?



            She flung the door open and stopped, her heart giving a huge thud.  Maggie was standing on the other side.  She wore oversize striped blue men’s pajamas, and her dark hair fell to her shoulders, surrounding a pointed white face that was even thinner than the last time Selina had seen it.

            “Selina,” she said calmly.

            “M-maggie,” Selina managed to gulp hoarsely.  “I-I thought you were still—“

            “In a mental institution?  I was.”  She tipped her head to one side.  “Aren’t you going to let me in, sister dear?”

            Selina was jogged out of her shellshock.  “Of-of course,” she stammered.  “Come in, Maggie, please.”

            “Magdalene,” Maggie said as she passed Selina.  She walked with a peculiar grace, so smoothly she almost appeared to be floating.

            “Wh-what?”

            “My name.  It’s Magdalene.”  The look she flashed her sister was contemptuous.  Selina flushed and felt tears pricking her eyes.  She had never seen Maggie act like this, but then, she had never really seen Maggie act like anything, had she?  Had never really seen Maggie when she wasn’t crying out in the grip of the terror and madness that her sister had brought down on her.

            Maggie sat down composedly on the couch in front of the television, and Selina fluttered awkwardly nearby. 

            “Can I, um, get you something to eat or drink?  I don’t know what we’ve got in the fridge…”  It was Ivy’s week for shopping, so probably salad and one of those green smoothies that looked like pond water.

            “No, thank you,” Maggie said primly, and Selina came over and sat down on the arm of the couch, glancing nervously at her sister.  The preternatural composure was almost terrifying.

            “Why did you come here, Maggie—Magdalene?”

            Maggie sat quite still for a moment, then turned.  “To see you, of course,” she said with a smile that, because it didn’t quite reach her eyes, appeared to straddle the line between polite and manic.  Those eyes, wide and dark, had a peculiar glint in them that made Selina’s heart sink into her stomach.

            “To see me?” she repeated stupidly.  She felt out of her depth, her brain scattered to the four winds.  _Not enough sleep_.

            Maggie moved toward her with a blur of shocking speed.  Suddenly, she had her face pressed right against Selina’s.

            “Oh yes,” she said softly.  “I was very eager to see you.  Very eager indeed, Eve.”

            Gordon’s voice echoed in her head.  _The last time somebody called, his voice patterns matched Hush.  You should be careful._

            Selina gulped.  She was in no position to get into a fight right now, even with someone as obviously physically frail as Maggie.  Besides, she didn’t want to fight her sister, even if she seemed to have progressed to a new stage in her madness.  This was _her_ fault.  If she had protected her better—if she had been a better sister—

            “Maggie,” she said quietly.  “It’s Sally, not Eve.  _Sally_.”  She had almost forgotten the baby name her sister had given her when she was younger.

            Maggie smiled again, a small, secretive smile.  “No, no, no, you can’t fool us,” she said, with a little giggle.  “All across this city is Eve, and you—you in particular—must be cleansed.”

            Selina slid off the couch.  “You’re not Maggie,” she said unsteadily.  She began to back slowly in the direction of her bullwhip, which hung from the wall, not quite yet within easy reach of her hand.

            Maggie rose to follow her.  “She is the Magdalene.  She is our mouthpiece and our body.  We are Hayyoth.”  She started to laugh, a low, full sound that sounded horrifyingly like a normal, amused laugh.  It was simply too low to be coming out of Maggie’s short, sticklike frame.  Selina took another step backwards.

            “Oh, no, no, Eve.  Don’t reach for your weapon.  It’s useless anyway.”

            Catwoman threw herself backward as Maggie leaped forward, hands extending, curled ironically into the shape of claws.  Selina’s hand fell on her bullwhip as Maggie hurtled into her.  The two women crashed to the floor, Catwoman struggling to bring her whip up and entangle her opponent.  Maggie’s fingers raked across her face, and a jolt of what felt like electricity shot through her, not enough to stun her, but enough to hurt.  She gave a short gasp and shifted her weight, trying to catapult the other off her.

            It should have been easy.  Maggie was a light, scrawny woman without any training in combat, while Selina had years of experience, some of which included sparring training from Bruce (both formal and not-so-formal, depending on which side of the law she’d been on at the time).  But Maggie was too fast; she slid to the side and, before Selina could react, she slammed her hand into the side of Selina’s head.  There was a crack that reverberated through Catwoman’s head, and everything went black.

            When she groggily pulled herself back to consciousness, the first thing she felt was pain in her arms.  She managed to drag her heavy eyelids open, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach when the first thing she saw was the floor of her apartment, at least three feet beneath her feet.  The ache in her head also contributed to turning her stomach over, and to her disgust, she vomited.  Sour bile splattered down her front and trickled down the sides of her mouth.  She was so dazed that it wasn’t until she felt it land hot on her stomach that she realized she was naked.

            “The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree.”

            It was Maggie.  She had one hand bound up to her chest in a crude sling and in the other hand, she held a knife that Selina recognized as one of the knives Harley had bought when she went out on a shopping spree a few days ago.  _Thanks, Harl,_ she thought sarcastically.

            Maggie smiled.  “O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed.”

            “Can’t we talk about this?”  Her voice broke as it came out.

            “Oh, no, Eve, no.  We know how convincing you can be.  For ‘your tongue plots destruction, like a sharp razor, you worker of deceit.’  Thank you for reminding me.”

            She slammed the knife into the wall by Catwoman’s head and squeezed her chin viciously until the mouth opened.  “Hold very still,” she whispered, and she lifted the hand clumsily out of the sling and closed it around the knife with a soft grunt of pain.

            “What are you doing?” Selina tried to say, but she couldn’t close her mouth, so it came out garbled and strange, but Maggie seemed to understand.

            “You are to be cleansed, Eve, by our Magdalene, for she is innocent, and our Serpent, for he is strong against thee, Eve, and by Adam, for of all men he knows thee the best and has good reason to fight against thy lies.  But first, we shall cut thy tongue and no longer will you speak your lies.”

            Selina gave a short scream and tried to struggle, but all she succeeded in doing was wrenching painfully at the joints in her shoulders.  Maggie smiled.  “Gently, Eve, gently, or the pain will be the greater.”  The cold metal of the knife touched the side of Selina’s tongue.

            “Maggie, please,” she pleaded as the first sharp pain pricked through her.  She tasted blood, but for an instant there was a flicker of something in her sister’s eyes.  Doubt?  “ _Please.”_

Maggie drew in a deep breath and dropped the knife.  Her face changed to something naked and vulnerable.  “Sally, you’ve got to be cleansed,” she said earnestly, in a voice that was almost a little girl’s.  “I’ve known that for a very, very long time.”

            “Maggie, it’s me, it’s your _sister_.”

            Maggie shook her head fiercely.  “You’re _not_ Sally.  You’re the Cat who’s taken her over.  I won’t let you hurt her anymore!”  She stooped to pick up the knife again and gave a sharp cry of pain when she tried to close her injured hand about it.

            Selina took advantage of the respite to press her case.  “Yes, I _am_ your sister, Mags.  Don’t you remember when Dad was yelling at you because you’d left your doll on the stairs, and he was going to hit you, but I stopped him?”  She didn’t add, _and god was that broken arm painful_.

            “You’re in Sally’s head,” Maggie said scornfully.  “Of course you’d know that.”

            “Maggie, why do you think I’m not me?” Selina asked urgently, her voice breathy with the pain blossoming in her arms.

            Her sister succeeded this time in collecting the knife from the floor, and Selina was stricken with a sudden, horrifying thought.  _If I ever see Bruce again, I won’t be able to tell him I love him._   Somehow that hurt worse than anything that had happened yet.  A sob caught in her throat but was quickly repressed.

            “I know you’re the Cat.  Sally wouldn’t have taken it.”

            “Taken it?  Taken what?”

            The answer burst from Maggie along with a desperate sob.  “The _relic_!  She wouldn’t have taken the _relic_!”

            The relic?  Oh…

            _Maggie knew she shouldn’t be up so late.  The clock was striking one in the morning, but she felt the need for spiritual guidance.  The cold stone hurt her knees, but kept her awake as she prayed quietly._

_“You see, God, I just want to know what’s happened to my sister Sally.  Whether she’s still alive, or whether she’s with you.  It’s not that I think she would be badly off if she were with you, I just want to know.  I imagine her all the time, and I wonder what she would be like now, or if I’d even recognize her.”_

_She glanced up wearily, gazing at the tall stained glass window through which colored moonlight was shining faintly.  It depicted the Lord Jesus Christ as he was tempted on the hill by the devil.  Suddenly, the window moved.  Maggie stifled a cry and watched with wide eyes as the window swung inwards to reveal a slender, black-clad figure who dropped silently to the stone floor and made its way toward the altar._

_Maggie, in her dark novice’s robes, kneeling on the ground, was close to invisible in the shadows, but she saw the intruder quite clearly, as the girlish figure stepped lightly over and with deft fingers opened the box lying on the altar and removed the item which was lying inside.  The moonlight glimmered off the emerald in which reposed the fragile curl of a saint’s hair._

_“Stop!” Maggie shot to her feet and started forward._

_The figure in front of the altar jumped, and the hood she had been wearing fell back, to reveal—_

_“S-s-sally?”_

_The big green eyes that caught hers were frightened and uncomprehending at first.  Then, with a horrified gasp, the lithe figure took a step back and made for the window._

_“Sally, no!”_

_But she was gone, and the relic-box was empty._

Selina felt hollow.  Maggie knelt in front of her, her voice a droning hum full of pain.  “But you were gone, and the relic-box was empty.  Empty.”

            “I brought it back,” Selina whispered.

            _Selina sat in a tree and thought hard, the emerald penchant clutched between her fingers.  It had been so_ easy _, and the money she could get for it would pay her debts for quite a comfortable amount of time.  But… “Maggie…” she whispered, and felt her lips curve up in a tiny smile.  Her little sister.  A_ nun _.  How weird.  How beautiful.  How appropriate.  The sister who walked by moonlight and the sister in the church._

_“Ugh, I’m going soft,” she muttered, before she vaulted down from the tree and began to retrace her steps back the way she had come._

            “Maggie, I put it _back_.  Three hours after I took it.  I _swear_.”

            Maggie’s big eyes looked up at her.  “You…”

            “I didn’t want you to think badly of me, I guess.  I don’t know.  But it’s still there.  Did you ever hear of it being missing?”

            “I—I thought…”

            “If you go and look now, it will _still be there_.  Please believe me, Maggie!  _Please_.”

            Maggie’s mouth moved.  “She is Eve.  She is a liar and you must cut out her deceitful tongue.”

            Maggie shook her head.  “No—no.  I have to know.” She tripped over herself, dropping the knife as she scrambled blindly backwards.  She half fell across the couch and stumbled to the door.  “I have to _know_.”

            The door slammed shut behind her, and Selina was left, naked, trussed up to the wall of her own apartment.  “Well, _shit_.”


	7. Sequestered

          Ivy groaned.  _Why_ had she agreed to wait at this stupid hospital while Cat went back to get some lovely _rest and relaxation_?  She could easily have made the argument that since _she_ hadn’t slept at all, _she_ ought to be the one going home.  Why hadn’t she?  Cat had been perfectly willing to stay!

            But she had clearly been so _tired_.  So emotionally exhausted.  She obviously thought the whole thing was her fault (which was _stupid_ , Ivy thought, just about as stupid as Harley’s assertion of the same damn thing.)  She’s just _looked_ at Ivy with those damn puppy-dog (fine, kittenish) eyes, and somehow Ivy had found herself saying in a calm voice, “I’ll stay, Selina.  You go home and get some rest.”

            _Honestly_.  She was getting _soft_.  But it was true that she didn’t need quite as much sleep as a—normal person.  Sunlight was vastly helpful in that regard.  She sighed and stretched and felt profoundly thankful that the sun had come out from behind the dark clouds that had covered the sky the night before.  She was still feeling a little groggy from her night without sleep, but at least, now that Gordon and his brat had left and Harls was sleeping, she could have a little peace.

            A resounding shriek sounded from the next room.

            “Oh _god_ ,” Ivy said profoundly.  She thought about just sitting here.  It was probably a spider.  Harley wasn’t very good with spiders.

            Ivy got up, cursing at herself and Harley and everything else she could think of, stalked over to the room and flung the door open.  “Harley, what the hell is it _now—“_

Hush was bending over her friend, one finger pulling up the injured corner of her mouth, and Harley, dazed and hurt, was unable to wriggle away.

            “Get.  Away.  From.  Her,” growled Ivy, stepping into the room.

            Hush looked up.  He was smiling gently, in a way Ivy had never seen him do before, not that she was particularly conversant with Hush’s habits.

            “Eve must be cleansed,” he said, his voice silky and low with menace, and the look in his eyes made Ivy’s stomach turn over.  There was something alien and dark in there.  Hush flipped a knife out from his sleeve—not a switch-blade, but a kitchen knife, long and sharp and gleaming, which he pressed to Harley’s throat.  She moaned, a gurgling, pitiful noise.

            “We would not advise you to move,” he said sweetly.

            “All right,” she said calmly.  “I won’t move.”

            He began to trace the knife down Harley’s chest.  Cloth parted and blood began to well up.  Harley squealed in pain, and then Hush huffed in astonishment as a green tendril entangled his wrist, yanking the blade away.

            “You know, if I get this to squeeze hard enough, I could probably break your hand,” Ivy said conversationally, walking slowly toward him.  “That doesn’t sound as if it would be very pleasant of me.  On the other hand—“

            Hush hissed in pain as the vine constricted.  “—I’m not feeling too pleasant today,” Ivy concluded.  A second vine whipped out and caught him around the neck.  “You know, honestly, I’m feeling so unpleasant that I’m just not sure how willing I am to leave you to the police again.”

            Hush’s face began to grow red with the effort of drawing breath.

            “I might even be able to rip your head off,” Ivy smirked.  “But I don’t want to get the hospital room all dirty.”

            Hush’s lips moved.

            “What?  I couldn’t quite catch that,” Ivy smiled, swaying sensuously forward.

            “You will be _cleansed_ ,” spat Hush.  The hand holding the knife twisted in a contortion a human shouldn’t have been able to perform, and the vine around it was sliced in two.  Ivy shrieked in outrage as he tore the other vine from around his neck and leaped backward from the bed into the open window-frame.

            “We are Hayyoth,” Hush thundered at the top of his lungs, and there was an odd, bell-like resonance to his words.  “We will cleanse you, Eve—do not forget it.  Await us!”

            He leapt lightly down from the second story window and was gone in an instant.  Ivy gave a sad glance at the now-wilting marigold, sighed, and hurried over to Harley, who was blubbering like a baby again.

            “Harls,” she said softly.  “It’s okay.  He’s gone.”

            “S-sorry,” Harley sniffled, gaining control of herself with an obvious effort.  “I was just so _scared_ , and I hate bein’ scared like that.”

            Ivy rolled her eyes but stroked the girl’s hair.  “It’s pretty scary when you don’t know what’s going on,” she admitted.  She sighed.  “Much as I hate to say it, we should probably give the commish a call.  It looks like the Eve thing just got bumped to high priority.”

            Barbara Gordon arrived within minutes of having been telephoned, along with an extremely irate and bedraggled-looking Cat.

            “What happened to _you_?” Ivy asked, and Harley started to giggle.  After what had happened, Ivy didn’t feel right about leaving her friend alone, so everyone was squeezed into Harley’s tiny hospital room.

            “My sister happened,” Catwoman said gruffly.  She glanced at Barbara, who was leaning back in her wheelchair with a noncommittal look on her face.  “Why is she here?”

            Barbara pushed her glasses up her nose.  “I’m here,” she said, in a stern voice, “Because Ivy just succeeded in driving off Thomas Elliot for the second time.”

            Catwoman stopped in the doorway, the expression on her face as if a truck had hit her.  “ _What_?”

            “Hush came back,” Harley muttered unhappily.  “While you were gone.”

            The dark-haired woman looked as if she might faint, so Ivy got up and steered her none-too-gently to a chair.  “Sit,” she said.

            “Okay,” Barbara Gordon said.  “Now that the whole family’s here—“

            “Ooh!  If we’re a family, does that make me the mommy?” Harley asked, bouncing excitedly until she was forced to stop with a gasp of pain.

            “More like the baby,” muttered Ivy.

            “ _Ladies_ ,” Barbara said sternly.  “ _If_ you wouldn’t mind.  From what you told Dad over the phone, Ivy, it sounds as if you three are in serious trouble.”

            “That’s a _serious_ understatement,” Harley put in.  She was in a surprisingly chipper mood, though Ivy suspected it had something to do with the rose she had just finished stripping of its petals.  She was fairly certain she had heard, ‘He loves me!’ followed by a squeal just before Babs entered.  Barbara gave Harley a stern look, and she subsided.

            “Hush was here, you said, Ivy?  What was he doing?”

            “Tryin’ to kill me, I think,” Harley put in, a little more subdued.

            “He called Harley Eve.  Actually, he may have called me Eve as well.  It was somewhat unclear.  He also said that Eve had to be ‘cleansed.’”

            “Urgh,” Selina groaned.  “I just barely made it back in one piece from listening to my kid sister spout pretty much the same thing.”

            “All right.  So the information we have is Eve, Hush, and Magdalene Kyle.  Not a lot to go on,” Barbara said thoughtfully.

            “There’s somethin’ else,” Harley put in, and the other three looked at her.  “There _is_.  Hush said, ‘we are Hayyoth.’”

            “So did Maggie,” Selina said, draping herself over Barbara’s wheelchair.

            “Hayyoth?” Ivy said.  Now that Harley mentioned it, she’d heard Hush say the same thing, but since she hadn’t recognized the word, it hadn’t registered.

            “The highest order of angel in Jewish mysticism,” Barbara said absentmindedly.  “Maybe that _is_ something.”

            “How did you—“

            “Wikipedia.”

            “Yeah, I thought we talked about them one year in Jewish school,” Harley added.

            Barbara typed away at the computer for a few more seconds.  “This would really work better in my tower,” she said, with a sigh.  “I don’t know.  I’m not getting anything about any kind of organization or anything that would do this.”

            “I don’t think it can just be an organization,” Selina said.  “I mean, Maggie was talking like a multiple personality.  Or like there was something else in her head.”

            “So was Hush,” Ivy added.  “And I don’t see Thomas Elliot as the kind of person who would put something like that on.”

            “Nor do I,” Barbara agreed.  “I’m going to have to do some more research on this.  In the mean time, I can alert the Justice League and get—Batman on the case.”

            “Yes.  That pause makes us all feel so _confident_ ,” Ivy drawled.

            Barbara frowned at her.  “You know, we _are_ trying to _help you_ ,” she pointed out.  “Although I’m not entirely sure _why_ …”

            “Aw, Babs.”  Harley laid a hand on her arm.  “We know you’re tryin’ to help.  Red’s just lettin’ off some steam, that’s all.”

            “Mmmhmmm,” Barbara responded.  “Well, look, you three.  Since we have no idea who is behind this, I think the best thing is to have you hole up in a location where nobody will be able to find you.”

            Selina stalked to her feet, cracking her bull-whip so suddenly that the other three jumped.  “I don’t like _hiding_!” she exploded.  “If Bruce were here—“

            Ivy fluffed her hair.  “Well, the Bat—the _real_ Bat— _isn’t_ here.  So we’re going to have to do what we can without his oh-so-coveted help.  And Barbara has a point.  Since we don’t know who is after us, the only thing we can do is lie low until we know what we’re up against.”

            Catwoman sighed.  “You’re right, of course.  I just wish I knew what had happened to Maggie…”

            “All right,” Barbara said.  “I’m going to make a few calls.  Listen—the only thing that’s important is that you _don’t tell anyone where you are_.  Got that?”

            “Of course,” Ivy answered.  She was frankly bored and irritated with the entire thing.  Catwoman nodded.

            “Huh?  You say somethin’?” Harley asked.  She had been fingering one of her roses again.

            “ _Don’t tell anyone where we are when we go into hiding, Harley!_ ” Ivy said extremely loudly.

            “Yes, Red,” Harley said meekly.

            Ten hours later, the three of them were ensconced cozily in a nice little apartment where no one knew of their existence.  Selina had settled in for a long cat-nap, and Ivy, who also hadn’t had a terrific amount of sleep lately, was thinking of copying her.  She had just laid her head down on the nice, comfortable-looking pillow, when the phone rang.

            “Oh, _god_ ,” Ivy groaned, pulling the pillow over her head.

            “I can get it!” Harley called from her bed, and she relaxed.  Yes, let Harley get it.  Nothing could go wrong with that…

            Ivy drifted off to sleep still wondering why she felt as if her thoughts were getting a little confused.


	8. In the Arms of the Angels

        Father Brian Young woke to what he thought at first was a crash of thunder.  As he turned over to go back to sleep, he heard the heavy door of the church shut and realized that it hadn’t been thunder at all; the door had been flung open hard enough to jar against the wall and send out the loud boom.  He glanced at the clock and realized that he had overslept badly.  It was nearing noon.

            Frantic footsteps pattered down the hallway, and his door was flung open.  Maggie stood in the doorway, her bare feet blackened with dirt, one hand bound up in a makeshift sling.  The bottoms of the oversize pajamas she wore were tattered and grimy with mud.

            “Maggie?” he said, beginning to rise.

            “Father—Father Brian—“ she gasped between pants.  She had clearly been running for a significant amount of time.  She took a few steps into the room and toppled to her knees in front of the bed.  “The relic…” she gasped.  “The _relic_ …”

            “What relic?  Maggie, my child—“ He slid to the floor next to her, taking her in his arms.  “Shhh, shhh, it’s all right.”  He stroked her hair rhythmically and rocked her back in forth, but her muscles were tight beneath his hands and would not loosen.

            “The emerald—with the saint’s hair—“

            “Yes, Maggie?  I know what you’re talking about.”

            She looked up at him with terrified, pleading eyes.  “Was it stolen?  Was it ever taken?”

            He shook his head slowly.  “No, of course not, Maggie.”

            She hiccupped.  “Can you show it to me?”

            He nodded.  “Yes, Maggie.  Yes, Maggie, of course.  Come with me.”

            He took her hand, and she clung to it like a little girl who was afraid of the dark.  She walked behind him, carefully, hopefully.  She kept taking deep breaths, holding them, then letting them out in a whoosh.  He pulled her closer to him, putting his hand about her skinny shoulders.  “It’s all right, Maggie,” he said softly.  “It’s all right.”

            He took the key out from where it hung about his neck.  After enough years of living in Gotham, one did not simply leave holy relics lying around where anyone could take them, particularly ones with significant material as well as spiritual value.  A heavy metal safe now housed the object, as opposed to the light wooden box which used to.

            He knelt beside the altar, inserted the key, and opened the door of the safe.  The emerald lay within, glimmering in the dim light like the near-dead heart of a star.  Maggie breathed in a sharp, hissing breath and then collapsed.  It was so sudden that he almost was unable to catch her, and he staggered as her weight hit his arms.

            “Maggie,” he said.  “Maggie, it’s all right.”

            Her eyes snapped open.  “The Magdalene must rest,” she said.

            “Yes,” said a voice from behind him.  Before he could turn, a cloth was thrust over his mouth and a sickly-sweet odor pervaded his nostrils.  As he spun away into darkness, he heard the voice continue.  “And the Hayyoth must counsel.”

            When he came back to himself, Father Young was bound and gagged.  He could see nothing but the corner of a stone wall that looked like the basement.  He could hear voices.  One was clearly Maggie’s, one was the voice he had heard earlier, and one was a peculiar voice that seemed to wander all over the vocal register.

            “We cannot cleanse Eve as we have been attempting,” Maggie’s clear voice said.

            “Why not?” asked the voice—a male voice—of the person who had chloroformed him.  “We were enjoying it, and so was this vessel.  Yes, I’d love to get back at all your little Eves.”

            “Patience, Adam,” Maggie said.  “We have our reasons.  This vessel is too innocent and pure to sully her hands.  And further, Eve resists.”  She paused for a moment, then spoke again, in child-like tones that he recognized as the real Maggie.  “I’ve got to help Sally.  She’s still in there, I know she is.  She put the relic back!”

            The third person laughed, a laugh that started as a low chuckle and rose in a frightening crescendo to a mad, high-pitched cackle.  “This vessel is fascinating,” he said.  “If we cannot cleanse Eve, what shall we do?”

            “Eve will cleanse herself with our aid,” Maggie spoke again, steadily once more.

            “What do we advise?” said the second person.

            The third laughed again.  “How fitting that the consequences of her sin should be the means of cleansing her.”

            “Yes,” Maggie said.  “She will bear the nephilim, and they shall be her downfall and her salvation.”

            _She will bear?_   His head ached, and he moaned without being able to stop himself.

            “Adam awakens,” said Maggie, and suddenly he was being rolled over, and the sudden, nauseous movement was too much for his stomach, and he vomited.  He choked on the bile as it was stopped suddenly by the gag.  “We must unbind his mouth,” Maggie said urgently.

            A dark-haired man bent into his line of vision.  Bruce Wayne?  Even Father Young, who did not spend much time paying attention to Gotham city’s finest, recognized the billionaire playboy.  He thought vaguely there had been something in the papers recently, but he had been too worried about Maggie to pay attention.  Hands dragged his gag down roughly and the vomit spilled from his mouth.  He coughed and spat, trying to rid himself of the noxious taste.

            “Adam, join Adam,” the man said amusedly.

            “My name is Brian,” Father Young hacked.

            “We are Adam,” the dark-haired man said.  “We must help Eve.”  He laughed, a nasty laugh that made Brian shudder.  “We must _cleanse_ her.”

            “Adam is no more innocent than Eve,” Brian protested, trying to speak the language of these—madmen—who had imprisoned him.

            “Eve is the mother who has abandoned her child,” Maggie said bleakly. 

            “Eve is the seductress who betrayed Adam,” said Bruce Wayne.  “And we fully intend to make her pay for _that_.”  His eyes gleamed in the light, the pupils dilated so far that only a thin rim of iris could be seen.  Brian flinched back from him as he reached out and touched him on the cheek.

            “Eve,” whispered the last voice.  “Eve is the child who listened to the Serpent.  And this vessel is the Serpent.  Eve will listen to him once more.”

            “Eve—who are you _speaking_ of?  Who is Eve?”  Father Brian was desperate.

            “I was Eve, Father.”  Maggie knelt in front of him, her hands clasped earnestly.  “I was Eve, until the angels said that if I accepted them and helped them to cleanse me, I would be the Magdalene.  So now I am the Magdalene.  But Sally is still Eve.”

            “Who are you to speak of cleansing?” Father Brian asked.  Now that he had a moment upright to get his bearings, he could see that they were, as he had thought, in the cellar of the church.  Dusty old prayer-books were piled high in one corner, as well as some ripped and moth-eaten cassocks.  Candles had been procured from somewhere and settled in a lopsided ring around the room, their flickering light making it feel like a cave after sundown, though it could have been any time of day, for no natural light reached the cellar.

            Wayne seized his hair and dragged his head back, laying his fingers against the priest’s throat almost as if they were claws.  “We are the Hayyoth,” he breathed.

            “They’re the angels, Father,” Maggie said earnestly, then spoke again, her voice suddenly void of emotion.  “We are the Hayyoth, Father.  We are the judges.”

            “I do not recognize your name,” he said, striving to keep his voice calm.

            “Adam, you have forgotten the old ways,” Maggie said.

            The crazed laughter sounded again.  “Want an apple to remind you?” said the third voice.

            “Who are the Hayyoth?” he asked.  Perhaps if he could get information out of them—try to figure out why they were acting as they were—

            “We are the highest of those you call _angels_ ,” whispered Wayne.  “I suggest you pay us your respect.  This vessel calls for blood and we will answer it if you give us cause.”

            “I do not wish you disrespect,” Brian said carefully.  “I only ask because, if it’s true that—that I’ve forgotten the old ways, I don’t know the right way to pay you respect.”

            “He speaks well,” Maggie said coldly.  “Shall we show him?”

            “As we wish.”  Wayne hefted Brian in his arms easily and carried him towards the back of the cellar.  “We have waited here for a long, long time, until Satan were absent and we were unbound and awake.”

            “Where are you taking me?” Brian asked, trying to stay as calm as he could.

            “To us,” Maggie said.  “So that you may see the glory.”


	9. Quickening

            Harley was bored and a little tired.  It had been a long and pretty painful day, as they’d moved her from the hospital to what Babs kept referring to as a safehouse.  She’d sort of napped for a lot of it, but she kept being woken up when the stretcher or the makeshift bed they had her on jolted and pain shot through her injured arm or her legs.  They had her on a lot of pain-killers, so she was feeling kind of dopey.  But in between the drifting, she was bored.

            The ringing of the phone cut through the pain-medication-induced haze.  “I can get it!” she yelled, as Poison Ivy groaned in the other room.  When there was no protest, she reached for the phone by her bed and picked it up.  “Hello?” she said sleepily.

            “Harls, sweetheart.”

            “Mistah J!” she squealed, then quickly moderated her tones, not wanting to wake her friends.  “Hiya, Mistah J!  How are ya?”

            “Fine, Harley.  More importantly, how are _you_?”

            “Me?  Oh…”  She felt the euphoria drain out of her almost instantly.  “Okay, I guess.”

            “What’s the matter?”

            “Oh, nuthin’.  I just ain’t feelin’ so good,” she mumbled dispiritedly.

            “I understand, hon.  I think I know something that might help.” There was something—off—about the way he was speaking.  Normal, almost.  Harley tried to figure out what it was, but the medication made her brain slip and slide around sluggishly.

            “What’s that, Mistah J?” she whispered into the phone.

            “I’ll be right over, darling.  I’ll tell you then.”  _Darling?  Since when does Mister J call me ‘darling’?_

            But the thought of seeing him again, finally, after all these weeks of longing and trying to make herself think of other things and moping around was too much for Harley.  “Oh, Mistah J,” she breathed ecstatically.  “Please come and see me.  _Please_.”

            “I’ll be right over, Harls—just tell me where you are.”

            She happily prattled off the address.  As he hung up the phone with a final, gleeful, “Don’t go anywhere, kid!”, she felt a slight twinge of guilt.  Hadn’t Ivy said something about not telling anyone where they were?  But it was Mister J…and maybe she’d dreamed it.  She was having a really hard time distinguishing reality from dreams these days.

            She lay back on the bed with a pained little whimper.  The drugs were starting to wear off, but in the confusion of moving, she didn’t know where they were being kept, and Ivy and Cat were both asleep.  Pain began to prickle through her arm, her hand, her legs…her cheek…she put up the uninjured arm and touched her cheek with a little sniffle.  She was so ugly now.  There was sure to be a scar.  Mister J would have something nice to say about it, though.  It would look as if she were smiling, and maybe a little judicious lipstick could enhance the effect?

            Pain lanced through her legs again, and the tiny stirring of hope fluttered and died.  She was a cripple.  She’d never be any use to Mister J again, and it was all her own fault.  He was probably only being nice right now because he figured that Hush had forced her to—like everybody else.  But he hadn’t.  It was all her own fault, all because she was such a little wh—

            The click of the window opening startled her, and she wondered how long it had been since the phone call, as a pair of long, thin legs in a purple tuxedo swung themselves through the window.  Light gleamed from his dead-white skin as the Joker slunk into the room.

            It was the first sight of him she’d had in ages, and for a minute, she just looked at him, fighting the sleepiness the pain had imposed on her.  He was a little skinnier—he just did not feed himself right when she wasn’t there!—his green hair curling unkempt about his ears.  There were spatters of rainwater on his shoulders—that was a little unlike him.  He was often fastidious about his appearance, strangely enough.  Unless there was something more important to worry about and surely _she_ didn’t rate that highly.

            He crossed the room and stood by the bed looking down at her.  Probably thought she was asleep; she was lying still and her eyes were only open to slits anyways.  With an effort, she opened them wider and managed a pained smile that only moved one side of her mouth.  “Heya, Mistah J!” she said.

            “Hey, Harley.”  He didn’t say anything else, just kept looking down at her with the strangest expression gleaming in his dark eyes.  His left hand was trembling very slightly.  Then he knelt by the bed and pressed a kiss onto the uninjured half of her mouth.

            Harley felt a noise halfway between a gasp and a whimper escape from her throat.  She hadn’t expected that.  And she didn’t deserve it.  She pushed at him feebly with her right arm, and he drew back, questioningly.  Also unlike him.  Harley’s head was dizzy and spinning.  “Don’t,” she murmured.  “It was my fault.  I went home with him.  I didn’t know who he was, I just wanted Ivy and Cats to be proud of me.  I’m so sorry, Mistah J.”

  1. You’re going to fine.”            



            Nausea rose in her stomach again.  “I’m not gonna be f-f-fine!” she wailed.  “I’m a c-c-cripple!”

            He waited until the tears began to escape from her eyes and make their way in rivulets down her crumpled face, then wiped them away with one long-fingered hand.  The gentle touch was almost too much for her.  She hadn’t done anything to deserve this kind of—of kindness from Mister J.  She had to be dreaming again.  “Wh-what are you doing?” she asked.

            He stared down at her again, again with that strange gleaming _twist_ in his eyes—almost like some kind of alien presence.  Then he smiled widely and produced a hypodermic syringe from inside a pocket.  It was glowing faintly golden, but that might just have been a trick of the light.

            “What’s that?” she sniffed.

            “It’s a fertility treatment,” he said softly, bending to inject her.  “I know—I know.  It can’t make up for anything, but we can try again.”  She tried to wriggle away, but he leaned forward gently, accidentally brushing her broken arm, and the pain held her still as a statue.  There was a pinprick feeling in her neck and a brief burning sensation.  He leaned forward and kissed her again, and she tried to push him away.

            “Mistah J, what are you doing?”

            “Shhhh,” he whispered.  “It’s going to be all right.”  He kissed her deeply and gently and ran his hand fondly across her hair and down the shoulder of her uninjured arm.  He was acting so strangely, but maybe it was a new game.  Maybe it was because she was hurt.  And it was just not in Harley’s power to resist Mister J after so long away from him.  She felt the first qualms melting away as he carefully undid the first few buttons of her nightgown, and the burning, tingling sensation sweeping through her body took care of the rest.  With a sigh of satisfaction, Harley surrendered herself to his caresses.

~

            When she woke in the morning, Mister J was gone, and she felt weak with pain and a little nauseous.  She struggled weakly to sit up, but the movement set her head spinning and her stomach started to rebel.  “Cat,” she choked out, and Selina was at her side in an instant.

            “Harley, what’s wrong?”

            “I think I’m gonna be _sick_.”  She clutched her stomach.

            “Hold that thought,” Cat said and was back just as Harley lost her battle with her stomach.  A metal bowl was thrust under her nose as the entire contents of her tummy erupted through her mouth.  Pain lanced through the side of her mouth and made her vomit harder.  Somebody was holding her hair and somebody else was stroking her shoulders.

            “There, there,” Ivy murmured in her ear.  “It’s going to be okay, Harls.”

            Finally, her abdomen stopped contracting, and she was able to pull back, gasping weakly.

            “This isn’t good,” Cat said worriedly.  “She could have an infection.  Did you feel all right last night, Harley?”

            “Uh huh,” Harley mumbled, thinking it was probably best not to go into details.  The whole thing was weird and fuzzy in her memory anyway and could definitely have been a dream.

            “Well, let’s call in a doctor,” Ivy said, in an irritable voice, but her hands on Harley’s shoulders were gentle.

            “I’ll go,” Cat offered.

            “I’m s-s-sorry!” Harley wept as she left.  “I’m s-s-such a n-n-nuisance.”

            “Nonsense,” said Ivy.  “You’re hurt and you’re ill.  Just lie still and stop worrying until the doctor gets here.”

            Reluctantly, Harley obeyed, and to her surprise, just a moment later, she was blinking her eyes open as a strange woman bent over her and asked her questions.  Harley answered all of them as best she could—no, she hadn’t felt sick the night before.  No, she hadn’t eaten anything weird, if you didn’t count hospital food.  The lady doctor made her sit up and examined her, paying special attention to her tummy area.

            Finally, she stood up, tucked her stethoscope away, and said, “You’re pregnant.”

            “ _What?_ ” Harley shrilled.

            The doctor set her glasses more firmly on her nose.  “About eight or nine weeks along, I’d say, particularly given you’ve started on morning sickness.”

            “Wha—but—but—that’s impossible,” Harley protested.

            Catwoman and Ivy were looking at each in consternation; neither of them appeared to be able to think of anything to say.

            The doctor sighed and looked down at her chart.  “I know that contraceptives have a high success rate, but there’s always the one percent chance or so—maybe you just got unlucky.”

            “No, no, you don’t _understand_ ,” Harley said.  “I haven’t slept with anybody in like three months, except for last night and the night before.  I mean, I guess I could be pregnant from one of those, but then I wouldn’t have morning sickness.”

            The doctor frowned.  “Oh, I didn’t realize…are you sure?  You haven’t had any blackouts or anything?”

            Harley shook her head.  “Nah, I don’t like to drink and I haven’t been around Mistah J that much.”

            “I think I’ll have to ask you to come into the hospital for some more tests then,” the doctor said.  “You could be further along than I thought and just not showing very much.”

            “I guess...” Harley said doubtfully.

            Cat took the doctor aside to work out when they could take Harley into the hospital.  Ivy sat down beside her.  “Last night?”

            “Huh?”

            “You said you hadn’t slept with anyone ‘except for last night and the night before.’  Now, as far as I know, you were sleeping here last night.  And the only people who knew where we were are Jim Gordon and Babs.  Probably the current Batman as well.  But I’ll be honest, Harls, I just don’t see you in bed with any of them, and I know Cats and I _certainly_ weren’t doing anything like that.  So.  I think you have some explaining to do, _Harleen_.”

            “Um.”

            “I know we _specifically_ told you not to tell anyone where we were staying, Harley.”

            “Well, I, um, I just—.”

            “You told the Joker, didn’t you.”

            “You told me to get the phone!  An’ I just couldn’t not tell Mistah J!”

            Ivy massaged her forehead.  “Harley…”

            “Yeah, but he wouldn’t hurt us!  It’s not like telling Brucie or Hush or…”

            “No, you just told the jealous madman who used to _beat_ you!”

            “Only when I was bad…” Harley mumbled.  She felt tears welling up in her eyes again.  “Besides, he wasn’t like that last night.  He was gentle.”

            “ _Gentle_?!!”

            “Do ya see any bruises, Red?  He knows I’m hurt!”

            Ivy hissed her breath out through her teeth.  “Fine.  Whatever.  It’s not like we’re in a huge amount of danger or anything and we’ll have to be moved _again_ as soon as possible.”

            Harley looked down at her sheets.  “’M sorry,” she mumbled.  “I just haven’t seen him in a long time.”

            “Oh, Harls.”  Red stroked her hair gently.  “I’m not mad, well, not very mad.”  She sighed.  “Let’s just get you to the doctor and I’ll go to the commish and get it all straightened out, okay?”

            “Kay,” Harley sniffled.

            “It’s going to be fine, Harley.”

            “But, oh god, Red, I’m _pregnant_!”

            “Don’t be silly, Harley.  It’s probably nothing.”

~

            “Well.”  The white-coated doctor rubbed his forehead.  “We’ve checked several times, quite thoroughly, Miss—uh, Quinzel.  You’re ten or eleven weeks along.”

            Harley, sitting exhausted and frightened on one of the stupid little white beds they had in hospitals, couldn’t think of anything to do but burst into tears.  Red immediately got up, put her arms around her, and started making comforting noises.

            “Doctor,” Cat said, also getting up.  “That’s—actually impossible.  There’s no way she conceived a child eight weeks ago!”

            “Even with the best precautions—“

            “She wasn’t _sleeping_ with anyone eight weeks ago!” Cat exploded, and Harley nodded through her tears.

            The doctor sighed.  “Please calm down, Miss—uh—“

            “Kyle.  _Ms._ Selina Kyle.”

            “It’s possible that we’ve misjudged the age of the fetus.  We could tell more with an ultrasound, if—“

            “Oh god, this is ridiculous.  And impossible.”

            Red kept making soothing noises, and Harley sniffed and managed to stop crying for a minute.  “Okay, do the stupid ultrasound.  Just _do_ it already.”

            “We’ll get you in as soon as possible.  You might have to wait a little while; we’re rather busy right now.”

            Harley thought of sitting here for longer, wearing just the skimpy hospital gown, with her arms and legs hurting and needing to be off painkillers in case she really _was_ pregnant, and she burst into tears again.  Red sighed and patted her arm.  “I’m going to get the commish on the phone again,” she said.  “I’m starting to worry that something is really wrong.  Maybe Oracle can help.”

            “Okay,” Harley sniffed, and Cat was beside her again. 

            “I’ll stay with you, okay, Harley?”

            Harley nodded and then mumbled, “I want Mistah J.”

            Catwoman sighed and hung her head.  “Oh yes.  The Joker would be _so_ useful at this point.”

            It took almost an hour to get her into the ultrasound machine, and then the doctors had to have another confabulation.  Not to mention the fact the first time they tried to take a picture, the machine gave a whining hum and broke, and then they had to call in a technician to fix it.  By now, Ivy was talking very fast into the cell phone she had borrowed from Cat; apparently she was having difficulty getting through to Babs or the commish.

            The tired doctor came back, holding a black-and-white ultrasound image.  “I’m afraid there’s really no doubt at all, Miss Quinzel.”

            He held it out to her and she stared down at the perfectly round curve of the little forehead, running into the nub of an adorable tiny nose.  “Oh,” she breathed.  “It’s so cute.”

            “Yes, but there is something a little strange about it,” the doctor said.

            “What is it?”

            “It’s just—after the machine broke down the first time, we managed to recover one of the earlier images, and—there appears to be—development—in the interim between the two pictures.”

            “Development?” Cat put in.

            “It’s slight, but the first image is clearly of an embryo at twelve weeks, and the second looks closer to thirteen.  It might be something wrong with our machines; we just got the new ones from Wayne Enterprises and I don’t know if the technicians really know what they’re doing yet.”

            Harley felt a horrible cold sensation creeping over her.  “Um,” she said.  “The first doctor-lady said she thought I was, um, six weeks along.”

            “Yes, but Lydia didn’t examine you in a hospital environment.  She could easily have been mistaken, and it was, in any case, just a ball-park estimate.”

            “Yes, but the estimates have been going steadily _up_ ,” Cat said, and Harley nodded uneasily.

            “Well, I’m sure it’s nothing, but we should certainly get a few more tests.”

            Harley cringed.  Pain shot through the backs of her legs again, and she moaned and clutched at Selina.

            “Is there any way you can get Harley some painkillers at least?” Cat asked grimly.

            “I’ll see what we can do,” the doctor said, and hurried off.  Red came back, looking utterly frazzled.

            “I’ve tried getting Gordon on every number I could think of,” she said.  “They’re all busy.  I got through to the police station a couple times, but they put me on hold and then dropped the call.  Something is clearly going on.  I’ll keep trying.”

            “I’ll do it,” Cat said.  “You stay with Harley.”

            So it was Red who was holding her hand for the rest of the afternoon, as the doctors sent her through yet another barrage of tests.  She was in the ultrasound machine at least three times, and she was really starting to get worried over the conferences the doctors had every time they saw the results, and the way they just wouldn’t tell her what was going on.

            Finally, they let her lie down again.  By now, everything was hurting, and she was too tired even to cry anymore.  Red sat next to her, holding her hand.  The woman doctor she had seen at first came over, holding a clipboard, and looking extremely worried.  “I’m afraid that we have somewhat bad news,” she began.

            Harley looked up at her through the haze of pain, and then gulped and gasped as she felt a tiny flutter in her belly.  “Oh god,” she said in a mix of fear and elation.  “It’s kicking.”


	10. A Day in the Hospital

           “Do you think I’m gonna die?” 

            Selina looked down at Harley, who was seated on the hospital bed, her legs dangling, her right hand curled over her stomach.  The swelling was faint but obvious; Harley had always been fairly thin.  Harley’s face was red and blotched with crying, and her naked face without makeup was childish.  She looked almost like a fat ten-year-old, and the thought gave Selina a chill.

            “Don’t be silly, Harley,” Selina said, with a reassurance she didn’t feel.  She desperately wanted to get out into Gotham, find the Joker, and _demand_ answers.  At least Harley was pretty sure it had been the Joker and not Hush.  _Count your blessings_ , she told herself sternly.

            “But, Cat, what if it just keeps growin’?  I’d explode.”

            “It’s not growing that fast, Harley.  They could perform a C-section.  You’ll be fine.”  She bit her lip.  “You know, if you wanted to _now_ , you could probably get rid of it.  That might be the safest option.”

            Harley looked even more frightened, but she shook her head definitely.  “I ain’t gonna get rid of Mistah J’s kid.”

            Selina sighed.  “Why did I know you were going to say that,” she muttered.

            At that point, the doctor returned.  “We’re going to be keeping you under observation, Miss Quinzel.  At the rate your—condition—is progressing, it seems likely to be completed within the next twenty-four hours or so.”

            Harley nodded tearfully.  Selina expected her to start crying again, but instead she sniffed and wiped her eyes and managed a watery smile.  “Okay,” she said.  “I’m not gonna die, right?”

            The doctor managed a reassuring smile.  “Dying from pregnancy is a little outdated, Miss Quinzel.”

            “Okay.”

            “Miss Kyle, if I could speak with you for a moment?”

            At that moment, Ivy returned to the room, slamming shut the cell phone she had been talking on so hard that the plastic casing cracked across.  “Damn,” she said absently.  “It’s no good.  I can’t get hold of anyone.”

            “Do you think one of us should go to the police station?”

            “Ahm.”  The doctor cleared his throat.  “I wouldn’t advise that, Miss Kyle.”

            “Why not?”

            He sighed.  “We haven’t wanted to worry you or your friend right now, but there are reports of mass hysteria coming in from all over Gotham.  The hospitals and the police station are swamped.”

            Ivy fixed him with a death glare.  “And you couldn’t tell me this _before_ I spent three hours on the phone because…”

            The doctor shuffled uncomfortably.  “I don’t think any of us realized who you were trying to reach.  I know my colleague said something about the young lady’s—“ he indicated Harley, who was staring down at her stomach with a half-awed, half-fearful expression on her face.  “—mother, and we all just assumed.  I really do apologize.”

            Selina snorted at the idea that Harley’s mother would be any use at all, then turned her attention back to the doctor.  “What _kind_ of mass hysteria?”

            “We’ve been having trouble getting decent reports, but violence toward women has increased, and there have been a number of reports of men—particularly young men—going berserk.  There have also been a number of reports of both men and women going catatonic and unresponsive.  So far, none of it has reached this side of Gotham, but it appears to be moving in this direction.”

            Selina shut her eyes.  “How long?” she said tersely.

            “Judging by the present rate of spread, twenty to twenty-four hours.  But of course that’s assuming it isn’t stopped, and I must say I don’t find that a particularly likely scenario.”

            Ivy turned to Selina.  “Do _you_ know how to deliver a baby?”

            “Only from the driver’s seat, if you know what I mean.”

            Ivy raised her eyebrows, and Selina wondered what had made her say that.  It didn’t give anything away, really, but she’d never told anyone since the whole thing had happened.  It was over and done with.  She wasn’t a mother now, and she never would be again, and thinking about it just—hurt.  But somehow in the past few weeks Ivy had become—almost a friend.  She was faintly surprised when Ivy’s only response was to squeeze her arm.

            “None of the women are going berserk?” she asked the doctor.

            “So far, that’s correct,” he affirmed.

            “Then you wouldn’t mind if we asked for a woman doctor and nurses to attend Harley?”

            The doctor grimaced.  “I’ll see what I can do.”

            It was a long day.  The hospital was overcrowded and somewhat understaffed.  Apparently a fairly large proportion of the staff usually commuted from the other side of Gotham, and only a few of them had made it in to work.  Even so, Harley was put into the ultrasound every hour, and the fetus grew steadily inside her.

            At about six o’ clock, they heard a muffled obscenity from the ultrasound technician, and she hurried out of the room.  Harley gave a small whimper and clutched her belly, which was now visibly distended.  “What’s wrong?” she said.

            “I don’t know,” Selina answered.  “It’s probably just the machine going on the fritz again.”  _Bruce_ , she added mentally.  _What the hell is wrong with your company’s stupid machines_?

            Ivy slid around the machine to the technician’s station.  “I don’t think it’s the machine,” she said slowly.

            “What is it?” Harley asked shrilly.  “What’s wrong with my baby?”

            The concern in her voice made Selina glance sharply at her, then shake her head.  Only Harley would start thinking of a child conceived and growing like this as a part of her.  The fact that the Joker presumably had a hand in it probably wasn’t helping.

            “It’s probably either the eyes—“

            “What’s wrong with her eyes?”  The doctors had confirmed about an hour ago that the baby was female.

            “Well, they’re open and looking right at the machine,” Ivy said, and Selina shifted uncomfortably.

            “That’s somewhat unsettling,” she said.

            “Yes, but I think the wings might also be part of the problem,” Ivy continued.

            “ _Wings_?!” Selina and Harley chorused in shock.

            “You remember the doctors were saying something about an abnormal back formation?”

            “Yes but they said it was nothing,” Harley said urgently.

            “They were right the first time,” Ivy said grimly.  “It’s got wings.”

            “Ooh,” breathed Harley.  “Like—like an angel?”

            Selina rolled her eyes.  Trust Harley.

            “Well, yes,” Ivy conceded.  “Like an angel, or alternatively, like a demon.  Or an eagle.  Or any one of the numerous other creatures that have wings.  Like _bats_ , Harl.”

            Harley poked out her lower lip.  “You don’t hafta be mean.  It ain’t the baby’s fault she’s so weird.”

            Selina poked her gently.  “Maybe not, Harley, but we’re still worried about you, and we don’t know what this baby is.  Ever seen _Alien_?”

            Harley’s face crumpled again, and Selina wished she had thought of a slightly less bloody example, but instead of crying, Harley leaned forward, rubbed her stomach and whispered, “Don’t you listen to them, kid.  You aren’t a monster.  Listen to your mama.”

            Selina looked up at Ivy and both of them choked with laughter.  Harley being maternal was a sight to see.

            The two of them slept in Harley’s room—Ivy curled up on the windowsill, and Selina catnapped on the floor.  When they woke up in the morning, Harley was moaning in pain, her stomach very visibly stretched.  When they’d gone to sleep, it had been swollen but only a little, a tiny, almost cute bump.  Now she looked properly pregnant.

            “Harls, what’s the matter?” Selina said, springing to her side.

            “My tummy hurts and I’m _starving_ ,” Harley wept.

            “Don’t worry, we’ll get you some food, honey.  Calm down.  _IVY!”_ Catwoman bellowed, and her friend woke up with a jolt.

            “Wha?  Yes?”

            “We need to get her some food.  Now.”

            “What do you want to eat, Harley?”

            “Strawberries.”

            “Well, that’s pretty easy, anyway.”  Ivy leaned out of the window.

            “An’ turkey an’ cake an’ sardines.  An’ maybe some peanuts.  An’…”

            Harley’s list stretched on until Selina found a pencil and paper and started jotting things down.  She checked with the doctors to make sure that the hysteria hadn’t spread this far yet, grabbed her bullwhip from where she’d stowed it in an umbrella stand, and made a beeline for the nearest grocery store.  Normally she would have preferred stealth, but she was under a deadline and didn’t have any ready cash on her, so she made do by threatening the terrified cashier and stealing a shopping cart. 

            As soon as she got back to the hospital, Harley began to eat.  She then proceeded to continue eating.

            “We really should have seen this coming,” Selina commented mildly to Ivy.  “Baby needs a lot of food.”

            Harley took a pause in tearing through a packet of pepperoni to breathe and say, “Gabby.”

            “Gabby?”

            “Her name’s Gabby.  Short for Gabriella.”  She then went back to stuffing foodly substances into her mouth.

 Selina eyed the rapidly depleting supplies.  “Someone’s going to have to make another food run,” she said tiredly.

It proved difficult to start the hourly ultrasounds again.  Harley refused to go without ample supplies of food and was starting to worry that the radiation might hurt the baby.

“Harley,” Ivy said in exasperation.  “Ultrasound doesn’t hurt _normal_ children, much less demonic things growing at ridiculous rates.”

            “Gabby ain’t a demon,” Harley protested matter-of-factly.  “And she’s gettin’ a lot more radiation all at once.”

            “Harley,” Selina said, losing patience.  “Just get in the damn machine.”

            Harley sulked but obeyed.

            Apart from the wings and the eyes (and the excessively rapid growth), the baby seemed to be developing normally, which pleased Harley no end.  One of the doctors took Selina and Ivy aside at noon.  “I’m a little worried about the wings,” she said, then gave a short, hysterical-sounding laugh.  “Good god!  I just _hear_ myself!  Anyways, it could pose a problem for the birth canal, and she’s not that wide in the hips to begin with.  We should probably think about a Cesarean section in about eight hours.”  She gave another half-laugh at the last statement and rushed off.

            Harley, when told the news, just sighed.  “It’s not like I got my perfect body to think of, is it?” she mumbled dispiritedly.  Selina put her arm around Harley.  She and Ivy had tried to get her to take some stronger painkillers, but she’d said they might be “bad for the baby.”  Catwoman had to hand it to her.  She was really brave when she felt as if she needed to be.

        At first, Harley had just been a roommate, a somewhat erratic one, a pretty friendly roommate whom she’d helped to Hush’s money, but still.  It was only quite recently that Selina had found herself warming to the younger woman.  She was cheerful and if she was a little selfish most of the time, she could occasionally be very generous.  She played the dumb blonde most of the time, but occasionally Cat saw the doctor peering through the little-girl façade.  She got the feeling sometimes that Harley had never really wanted to grow up.  And yet, somehow, she was handling this—this _thing_.  Probably better than Selina herself would have.

        The long afternoon wore on.  Harley ate.  Ivy went on another food run.  They got the doctors to bring them in _Charlie’s Angels_ and laughed themselves sick while Harley dipped French fries in ice cream and complained about not being able to lie on her stomach.

        It was around five-thirty.  They’d just finished watching _Charlie’s Angels_ for the second time, amid frequent stops for ultrasound and other doctor’s checks.  Harley gave a gasp and clutched her midsection, which was as large as a beach ball (as Ivy had rather unkindly remarked a few minutes ago and been mercilessly beaten with a pillow as a result.)

        “Harley?”  Selina slid off the bed and stood next to her.

        Harley gulped.  “Think it might be Gabby.”

        “All right.  Stay calm and take deep breaths.  She’s a little early, isn’t she?”

        “Earlier than the doctors thought, anyway,” Ivy replied.  “I’ll go get someone.”

        She was moving toward the door when the lights flickered and went out.  Selina cursed, wishing she had a pair of her night-vision goggles.  If they hadn’t had to leave so quickly…

        “What’s going on?” Harley shrilled.  Then she gave an _oomph_ noise, and Hush’s voice spoke quietly from behind her.

        “Hush, my dear.  Now, now—“ as Catwoman reached for something to use as a weapon.  “I wouldn’t be too hasty, if I were you.  We wouldn’t want anything tragic to happen to your dear little harlequin, would we?”

        The tell-tale click of a lighter preceded the wavering flame that shot up to illuminate the gleaming black barrel of a gun resting gently on Harley’s temple.

        “Um, guys?” Harley squeaked.  “Please don’t annoy the nice man!”

        “Shut up,” Hush said calmly.  “The next time I hear your voice, Harley, I’m going to blast your brains out.”

        Harley, quivering, was silent.

        “What do you _want_ , Hush?  Haven’t you done enough?” spat Catwoman.  Every muscle in her quivered with desire to lash out at him, but with the gun right at Harley’s head she couldn’t risk it.

        “Do I detect some hostility, Kitty?”  He brought the hand holding the lighter close to the unmarred half of Harley’s face, and she whimpered but didn’t say anything.

        “Don’t hurt her,” Ivy said.

        Hush smiled at her.  “I won’t.  Assuming you delightful ladies just come with me.  Oh, don’t glance toward the door.  The doctors are all quite busy right now, I can assure you.  I’m afraid you really don’t have a choice in the matter.  Well, I suppose you do, but somehow, Cat, I don’t think you’re going to let dear Harleen’s brains be splattered across the wall.”

        Catwoman hissed low in her throat.  “Harley can’t be moved.  She’s about to go into labor and she _can’t walk_.”

        “Fortunately for her, I can carry her,” Hush answered.  “And don’t worry, we’ve got transportation waiting.  Harley, I suggest you don’t struggle.”

        He lifted her from the bed far too easily for a man trying to lift a heavily-pregnant woman going into labor.  “Come along now.”


	11. Green Dreams

            Ivy woke up in stages.  The first thing she was aware of was a pounding in her head.  She groaned, trying to figure out what had happened, but her memories were fuzzy and fragmented.  She backtracked, trying to follow her last coherent memory to its conclusion.

            Hush had taken them out the back of the hospital, through a labyrinth of darkened hallways.  In some locations, the lights lining the ceiling were spitting sparks.  At some point, Harley gave a moan, and Hush hissed in disgust.  “Not even housetrained, are you?”

            “M-m-my water broke, I think.”  Harley’s teeth were chattering, and in the light from a sparking electrical outlet, Ivy saw blood on her lips.  She tried to protest, but Hush threatened Harley again, and they went on through a blur of corridors. 

            There was a van waiting for them outside.  Hush lifted Harley bodily into the front and gestured to Ivy and Selina to get into the back, which they did.  Everything got strange and jerky in her memory then—the telltale hiss of leaking gas, Selina’s quiet sigh and subsequent unconsciousness.  Then a white face with dark eyes leaned backwards and tossed something powdery and white toward her.  The pain was so strong that for a long time that was all she was conscious of; eventually she slipped mercifully into unconsciousness.

            She had a vague awareness of being carried in a strong pair of arms, every motion painful as a fire burned inside her blood.  For an instant, she was conscious of the smell of lilies pervading everything, and then it was gone, and she was gone.

            Her head hurt so badly.  Her throat was dry and parched, and her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth.  She gingerly tried to unstick it and whimpered at the pain as it came loose.  She was horribly thirsty.  She tried to flex her fingers, but they felt limp and useless.

            “Good.  You’re awake.”

            She tried to spit in the direction of Hush’s voice, but she could not find any moisture in her mouth, and she coughed instead, a dry and dusty cough that sent pain juddering through her lungs.  Her voice came out cracked when she sent the worst obscenity she could think of in his direction.

            Hush just laughed.  “Sticks and stones, Pamela.”

            “What do you want with me?” she whispered, her voice dry as a desert wind.  She dragged her sticky eyelids open, but the light was too dim to see much.  She could just make out the form of a man a few feet in front of her; then, as he turned his face toward her, she could see two bright golden eyes peering out of the space where his face must be.  She gave a faint cry and tried to move away, but her muscles still wouldn’t obey her.

            “In any case, I don’t particularly want anything with you.  Unfortunately, my benefactors have decided that you’re important.  Oh well.”  He sighed.  “You’re probably rather uncomfortable right now.  I have to say I’m not exactly enamored of you, though I’d rather be dealing with the Cat right now.”

            “The feeling is mutual,” Ivy gritted out.  “You _bastard_!”  She reached out with her mind, trying to feel a friendly plant—a dandelion, a sprig of creeping Charlie, _anything_ , but there was nothing.  All she felt was cold, dead emptiness.

            “You’re probably wondering why you’re in so much pain right now,” Hush continued as if she hadn’t spoken.  “The answer, Pamela, is salt.”

            Salt.  Horrible, nasty, dehydrating, growth-impairing salt.  Ivy shuddered.

            “It’s a good way of inducing unconsciousness if you’re dealing with a plant thing,” Hush said matter-of-factly.  “More importantly, it’s a good way of ensuring that your cells will suck up the next moisture they come in contact with.”

            He drew out a plant mister which glowed faintly golden in the dark.  His eyes crinkled as if he were smiling, and he pushed it into her face and squeezed the bulb.  Moisture—cool, glorious moisture—washed over her face and skin, beating back the burning fire of the salt.

            “Feels good, doesn’t it?”  She could hear the smirk in his voice.  “That’s not the only thing you’ll be getting, though.  So I’m afraid…”

            He made a motion toward her, and this time she felt the tiny crystals hitting her skin.  She screamed as the pain flared up and darkness reached out to encompass her once again.

            When she came back to herself this time, it was a little lighter.  Daylight seemed to be trickling in down from a boarded-up window.  She stared at it, longing to be close enough to bathe in the golden glow.  It was the next day.  She could tell by the way she was already beginning to feel weaker without the touch of the sun.  Anything past twelve hours and she started to weaken.  Usually it didn’t progress very fast, but with no water either and with every cell screaming in pain, she didn’t know how much longer she could last.

            “Awake again?  You’re stubborn.”  She hadn’t seen him; he had been oddly invisible in the half-light, but now he moved toward her, holding loosely in his hand another plant-mister.  Ivy didn’t bother to respond.  “Surprisingly uncurious as well.  I would have expected more questions from you, but maybe I’m too used to your cat.  If you listen carefully, I expect you can hear her screaming.”

            Ivy shut her eyes, wishing she could shut her ears.  She didn’t hear anything, but now her ears were straining to catch anything that sounded like Selina’s cries.  _I do not have friends_ , she told herself.  _I don’t care about the Cat._   She knew it wasn’t true, and this was the most inconvenient time for her to suddenly develop an idea of friendship with humans.  _Friendship?  More like sisterhood_ , she thought bitterly.

            “But perhaps they haven’t started yet.  The priest may have a few qualms.  Unluckily for Cat, she’s mostly human, and I’m afraid they haven’t got the resources to impregnate a human any way but the normal.  Now, you, on the other hand.  Count yourself lucky that I’m such a skilled physician.”

            Ivy felt cold fear cut through the burning in her veins.  “What are you talking about?” she rasped.

            He held the plant-mister up but paused with his hand part of the way to her face.  “It’s really quite brilliant.  I have to say, I doubt you’ll appreciate the effort that went into ensuring that it would deliver the DNA correctly.  Suffice to say, I spray you with this, and less than forty-eight hours later, hey presto!  A green mother.  Though, you know, I’m not sure if your body is equipped to handle it.  You might be fine, but you might also end up gutted and dead.  I suppose we’ll find out.  Ah, the things that must be done for science, eh?”

            There was something off about him.  Ivy hadn’t spent much time around Hush, but from what she had gathered from Harley and Cat, he wasn’t usually vindictive, except in the pursuit of his goals.  There was a frightening aimlessness about his cruelty now, as he finished raising his hand and depressed the mister. 

            The cool water soothed the burning of the salt almost immediately.  Ivy struggled, and at last her limbs obeyed her, but she was bound too tightly to move.  Then she heard the screaming and recognized Harley’s voice.


	12. The Golden Child

            In the darkness, they shone, golden and compelling.  In the silence, their voices were upraised in lyrical song.  In the stillness, their voices called like silvery bells, and he was captivated…

            Brian woke with a groan.  His head felt tinny and hollow.  He was no longer bound or restrained, but lying in a bed.

            “Are you all right, Father?” said an earnest voice, and he rolled over and looked into a face out of Gotham’s worst nightmares.  The bright green hair over a shockingly white face and crimson lips made Brian start back with a low exclamation.

            _Serpent_ , something whispered in the back of his mind, but the voice was informatory, not cautionary.  The Joker—whose face he instantly recognized from God knew how many newspapers—was looking at him with a very human expression of confusion.  “I’m sorry, Father,” he said contritely.  “I didn’t mean to startle you.  I’m a little confused.”

            “Of course,” Brian said, sitting up cautiously.  He recognized the basement of the church, but there was now a bed in it (which he was lying on), and the extra prayerbooks that were normally kept down here had disappeared.  “I’m…” he chose his words carefully.  “…I’m a little confused myself.  I don’t think that we’ve met?”

            “Sorry about that,” the Joker said.  “I’m Jack Conrad.”  He held out a tentative hand, which Brian, just as tentatively, took.

            “Father Brian Young.”

            “Looks like we’re in a church,” the other man said with a laugh.  “You know it?”

            “I…am not sure,” Brian said carefully. 

            “I sure don’t.”  ‘Jack’ stretched.  “I’m worried.  I was with my wife—and then—I can’t really remember.  I don’t usually have blackouts like this; I’m pretty sure I haven’t been drinking.”

            “Your wife?”

            “Harley.  Well, Harleen.  Everybody calls her Harley, though.”

            Brian had seen Harleen Quinzel once.  She had come in to light a candle for a friend who was going through a rough time.  She had been a tall, blonde woman with round glasses and a tiny, hidden smirk.  Later he had seen her name crop up in the papers occasionally.

            Jack covered his face with hands.  “She’s so beautiful.  I’m—I’m so worried about her.  There was an accident.  She had a miscarriage.  They promised me she’d be all right, but her face was burned and she broke her arm, and—“  He put his hands to his head.  “My head hurts.  They said she’d be all right.  They said she’d be…giving birth.  They said they’d help me make her whole again.”

            “Who did?” Brian asked gently.

            _We did, Adam._   The voices chimed sweetly inside his head, like a choir of one thousand angels.  It was like standing in the center of an organ as it was played.  Brian clutched at his head in pain.  _Do not fear us, Adam.  You are part of God’s plan._

            “Yes…I—who are you?”

            Golden light filled his mind and his thoughts, burning searingly through him.  _You will come to know us, Adam.  You are part of the great plan.  You will participate in the cleansing of Eve_.

            A vision of the earth, glowing bright and golden beneath the powerful light of the sun, came to Brian.  Men walked the earth, and the trees stretched out and bore fruit for them, and they halted and ate and the taste of the earth was good.  Women walked the earth and they lay beneath man as was intended, and they were clean and shot through with the golden light that pervaded everything—

            And then it was gone.  Brian gasped.  His arms and legs were trembling, and there was sweat dripping down his forehead.  He was kneeling on the floor, his knees aching in pain and cold.

            “You’re awake!”  Jack came over and crouched beside him.  “You were just kneeling there for—I don’t even know how long.  Are you okay?”

            Brian tried to answer, but had to gasp for breath.  The experience had been exquisite, and also exquisitely painful.  He tried to get his mind to tell him what had just happened, but it was already slipping away.  He staggered to his feet, tripped, and would have fallen back down if Jack hadn’t slipped a shoulder under his arm and caught him.  “Careful there!  You’d better sit down!”

            “Thank you,” Brian gasped, as he was settled onto the bed.

            “Sure.  I think maybe something like that happened to me too.  Like I said, I feel like I’ve been having these—blackouts.  Do you think there’s a virus or something?  Maybe an encephalitis…I was reading something about them last weekend…Do you think they’ve quarantined us here?  But they said she’d be giving birth.”  He began to wring his hands absentmindedly.  “I’ve got to find my wife.”

            “I’m afraid that we can’t leave,” Brian said and wondered why he thought that.  They weren’t ready to leave yet.  That had to be it.  Why did his thoughts feel so muzzy?  He had a headache…

            Screams lanced through the air—a woman’s voice.  Jack started upright.  “That’s Harley!  Oh god, what’s wrong?”  He ran to the door and rattled unsuccessfully at the lock.  The screaming got closer, and suddenly the door opened.  A tall man with dark hair holding a screaming, thrashing woman stepped in, deposited her on her feet, and stepped out again.  Her legs crumpled beneath her, and she fell to the ground.  Brian heard the key turn in the lock before he had a chance to leave.

            “Harley!” Jack cried, jumping to her side.

            “Mistah J!” the blonde woman panted, then screamed again.  “Ow!  Ow!  Owwwww!  I don’t wanna have a baby!  It HURTS!”

            “What are you doing here?” Jack asked.  “Why aren’t you in a hospital?”

            “Because Hush is an asshat!  I don’t know why they wanted me here!”

            “They want the child born on holy ground,” Brian said and wondered what had made him say it.

            “I don’t understand…” Jack murmured.  “Harley, honey, can you make it to the bed?”

            “NO!” the woman shrieked.  “I’M IN LABOR!”

            “Yes, Harls, I can tell,” Jack said patiently.  “I don’t think I can lift you, though.”

            Harley looked up with a blotchy, tear-stained face.  “Oh, Mistah J,” she said breathlessly.  “I’m too _young_ to die!”

            “You’re not going to die, Harley,” Jack said, looking helplessly at Brian, who got totteringly up from the bed and came over. 

            “I think the two of us working together can get you to the bed, Eve—I’m sorry.  Harley, right?”

            The look on her face turned from pained to stricken as he spoke, and she shrank back into the corner.  “I’m Harley,” she moaned.  “ _Harley_!  Harleen Quinzel!  Stay away from me!”

            “Harley…” Jack bent over her.  “It’s gonna be okay.”

            She looked up at him, frantically, letting out a little, gasping, pained cry, then gulped.  “You’re workin’ with them, aren’t you, Mistah J?  You ain’t acting like my Mistah J…”

            “Harley!”  Brian could see the naked shock and pain in the man’s face as he knelt in front of the woman he called his wife.  He took her face in his hands, and Brian looked away at the gentle intimacy of the gesture.  He heard the sound of a soft, chaste kiss, and then Jack spoke, his words tumbling over each other with eagerness.

            “I know I haven’t always been great to you, Harls.  I know that.  I’m sorry for everything, but I _love_ you.  You gotta believe that.”

            She sniffled loudly.  “Ya mean that, Mistah J?”

            “Of _course_ I do.”

            “Okay.  Just don’t start callin’ me Eve, okay?”

            “Of course, Harley.”  Brian looked back.  Jack had gathered her into his arms.  “Listen, kid, I gotta get you over to the bed, and Brian’s gonna help, okay?”

            She shook her head mutely, and to his shock, Brian saw that her lips were bleeding, bitten and raw.  She gave another gasp of pain, her hands flying to her stomach, and she moaned.

            “Please, kid.  I promise he won’t hurt you.”

            Harley still looked fearful, but as pained tears squeezed out of her again, she nodded uncertainly.  Brian approached as carefully as he could and tried to alleviate the tension by speaking calmly, as he might approach a stray cat—as he had approached Selina Kyle some few nights before.  “I’m just going to help your husband carry you over to the bed, Miss—Harley?”  He just stopped himself from saying Quinzel, glancing at Jack as he did so, but if the other had noticed what he might consider a slip of the tongue, he said nothing.

            “I think you came into this church once,” he continued, as he put a careful arm beneath her shoulder to support her.  “You lit a candle for someone.  Are you Catholic?”

            Between the two of them, they got her into a standing position, at which point, she yelped and started crying in pain again, but answered him, gulping for breath every other word.  “Ah!  Ow!  Ouch!  No—I—my dad was Catholic.  My mom’s Jewish, though, so really I’m Jewish too, I guess.  I went to Hebrew school for a while when I was a kid.  Owie!”  She screamed in real pain again as they tried to get her to the bed.  “I can’t—agh—I can’t control my _legs_!” she sobbed.  Jack was having trouble supporting her from his side, as her arm was bandaged and bound up in a sling.

            Somehow, though, together, they got her up and onto the bed as she screamed and sobbed with pain.

            “There.”  Jack knelt beside her, taking her hand in his.  “You’re gonna be fine, baby-doll.”

            She screamed again, and Brian saw Jack wince as her nails dug into his hand, but he used his other hand to stroke her hair back from her face.  “Hey?  Kiddo, it’s gonna be fine.”

            “I’M HAVING A BABY!” she screamed.

            “Yeah, can’t argue with that.”

            Brian pursed his lips together.  “I’ll see if I can get someone to…to…”

            _Eve’s child will cleanse her.  If she survives, she may see the new world ushered in.  If she does not, there will be more to take her place._   The words burned through his mouth and throat with crackling, fiery beauty.  He coughed, putting his hands to his throat.  “I’m sorry,” he rasped.  “I don’t know what—“

            He didn’t have a chance to finish before he was pinned to the wall, Jack’s thin, long fingers anchored around his throat.  “What did you say?” the other man shouted.  The fingers flexed, and darkness burst in front of Brian’s eyes.  A tinny roaring started up in Brian’s ears, and the voices chimed painfully through his head again.  _Adam is important, Serpent.  We must not quarrel._

            And he was on the ground, massaging his now even-more-painful neck, as Jack looked down at him with a strange expression on his face.

            “I’m sorry,” he said abruptly.  “I don’t know know what came over—I’m sorry.”

            He rushed back to Harley’s side.

            “I’ll see if I can get someone to bring us some supplies or—call the hospital,” Brian rasped in a barely audible whisper.

            Hammering on the door brought no response, and eventually, he was forced to give up.  Jack sat beside Harley, soothing her as best he could as she screamed.  The minutes stretched into long hours of solitude, until Brian began to wonder just how long it would be before somebody came.  He was vaguely aware that he _wasn’t_ aware all the time, but it wasn’t sleep that captured his consciousness.

            He had the strangest feeling of being enveloped in a golden glow, and at one point, he fell into a deep stupor, until Jack yelled, “I can see the head.  Come on, kid, _push_!  You can do this!”

            And Harley, with a grunt, screamed, “No I can’t!  I CAN’T!  OW IT HURTS!  MISTAH J, MAKE IT STOOOOOP!”

            “Just a little longer, hon, you’re doing fine.  Father—please—“

            Brian dragged himself to his feet and over to the bed, where golden light was spilling from somewhere between the woman’s legs.

            “What in the name of heaven—“ he gasped.

            “I don’t know, Father,” Jack said grimly.  “All I know is she’s my wife and that’s my kid.”

            Harley screamed and gasped, her body and face contorting, and for a long moment, the light was blinding.  As the green afterimages began to clear from Brian’s vision, he saw that Harley was now sobbing quietly to herself and Jack held in his arms a baby with skin like glass filled with clear yellow light.  It made no noise but turned its large, pupil-less eyes on Brian and opened at its back, a pair of wide, angelic wings.  Something about them seemed off, and it took Brian’s confused brain a moment to recognize that it was the fact that they were fleshly outlines, devoid of feathers or any recognizable texture other than the texture of its skin.

  


	13. The First and Second of the Nephilim

            “She’s so pretty!” Harley exclaimed.  “Look at her tiny nose and her tiny fingers and her tiny _wings_!  Oh, I wish I could hold her!”

            Mister J leaned as close to her as he could, pillowing the baby between them.  “How’s that, baby-doll?”

            She squealed happily and leaned into him, tickling Gabby under her chin.  “Just _perfect_ , Mistah J!  It’s like we’re a real family!”

            The sound of the door opening made her turn her head, and a small woman with dark hair entered.  One hand was bound up with bandages, and she was skinny and very grubby.  When she saw Gabby, she got to the floor and knelt clumsily.

            “My lady,” she said awkwardly.

            “Huh?” Harley asked, confused, and she felt Mister J’s body tighten protectively about the two of them.

            “You are the first of three,” the woman said with a beatific smile.  “You will be the instrument of the Hayyoth and you will bring about the Apocalypse.”

            “What’s she talkin’ about?” Harley looked uneasily at Mister J, who didn’t respond but held her close. 

            The dark-haired woman shut her eyes and bowed her head for a long moment; when she opened them, golden light spilled from behind the lids, annihilating all signs of the iris and pupil.  Harley shivered as the woman rose to her feet, and then gave a little scream as the priest guy did the same, his eyes the same blank gold.  He joined the woman and both of them turned to the huddle of Harley, Mister J, and Gabby.

            “Join us, child,” they chorused.  “Join us and lead us to victory, O first of the Nephilim.”

            The child wriggled in Mister J’s arms.  Harley gave a small gasp and tried to hold onto her, but she slipped easily away from her parents and dropped to the floor, her featureless wings wrapping around her like a cloak.  As she landed on the floor, she was no longer an infant, but a small child, a little larger than a toddler.  She turned her face back to Harley and Mister J and cocked it a little to one side.

            “Gabby!” Harley cried.  “Come back to Mama, honey!”

            The child opened her mouth.  “Mama?” she said softly.  There was an odd echo behind her words, a resonance that to Harley’s mind belonged to a synthesizer or maybe to a discussion in a really big, echoey sort of room like a garage.

            “Ooh, Daddy!”  Harley clutched at Mister J.  “She’s talking!”

            Mister J didn’t say anything, and when she looked inquiringly up at him, she saw that he was clutching at his head.  “Mistah J?”

            “Child, you have nothing in common with Eve or the Serpent.  Come to us.”

            The child hesitated for a moment longer, and then she stepped neatly across the room to the priest and the woman.  Harley felt a cold grip constrict her stomach.  “Gabby?” she said quaveringly.

            The lips of the child curled into a smile.  “I am the first of the Nephilim,” she said calmly.

            “Gabby!” Harley screamed.  “You’re Gabby!”

            Mister J tried to hold her back, but she scrabbled off the bed, forgetting in her haste that she couldn’t control her legs, and she sprawled painfully to the ground.  White-hot agony speared through her broken arm, and she whimpered.

            “Don’t,” Mister J said.  “Give the kid back.  She’s not yours.”

            “She is ours,” the woman said.  “She is a child of the Hayyoth.”

            “I am a child of the Hayyoth,” Gabby said, moving across the room smoothly and precisely.  Harley watched her through tear-blurred eyes.

            “Gabby, come _back_ ,” she moaned.  “Come to Mama.”

            “Gabby,” she heard Mister J say wonderingly.  Then, “Oh god, my head.”

            Gabby walked steadily over to the woman and the priest, and Harley dragged herself painfully toward them, trailing blood and crying uncontrollably.  She reached out a hand and caught at her daughter’s heel.  Her fingers barely brushed it, and she felt a weird jolt of energy before Gabby pulled away and stood looking down at her with the same blank expression on her face.

            “Do not touch the Nephilim,” chorused the priest and the woman, and the door opened and shut again, and then it was Hush gazing down at her, his eyes blazing golden fire.  Harley whimpered, and then Mister J was there, holding her.  “Back the hell off!” he whispered, the venom heavy in his voice, and even in the midst of her pain and despair, she couldn’t help but hold onto the threat—the protectiveness—the _care_ in his voice.  _Mistah J loves me!  He does!_

            She didn’t know why he was acting the way he was.  She didn’t know if it was a game, or a mood, or if he was just being crazy in a different way, but who cared?  Mister J would protect her.

            Hush laughed, his voice laced with the same resonance her child’s had held, though not as strongly.

            “Eve, you forget yourself,” he whispered.  “And you, Serpent—you who came after us and have now forgotten.  You will both be witness to the Apocalypse.  You will come with us now.”

            “Let us go,” Mister J said grimly.

            The glow in Hush’s eyes half-faded as he responded, but the laughter in his voice intensified.  “Serpent, out of respect to you, we shall do nothing.  But Eve is expendable.  Should you choose to disobey—“  The gun slid silently out to point at Harley, who was by now heartily sick of having guns pointed at her by Hush.  She wasn’t used to feeling so utterly helpless, and she didn’t like it.

            “Don’t hurt her!” Mister J snapped, and she thrilled to the sound of concern in his voice.

            “Then do as we tell you,” Hush answered.  “Now pick her up and follow us.”

            “I’m sorry, baby-doll,” Mister J whispered to her.  With an effort, he hoisted her into his arms, and she bit her lip against the pain, then shut her eyes and tried to pretend none of it was real except for the solid feeling of his heartbeat against her cheek.  His breathing was harsh and loud and low, his heart beating in double quick time.  Her head nestled in the depression between his shoulder and his chest, and somehow even in all this mess, she felt safe.  She had always _known_ that he loved her, and now she had proper proof.  Not even Ivy could argue with it now.

            After some long minutes, the travel stopped, and she opened her eyes and gasped.  They were inside a long, low room filled with buttons and dials and giant TV-style LCD screens, everything glowing faintly golden.  The screens were covered with a disjointed mixture of visuals—scenes of Gotham, some she recognized from the past, others that were probably the present, as well as some things that had to be from movies and a few giant walls of text that looked faintly biblical from the few words she could make out.

            Mister J was sweating.  “I gotta put you down, kid,” he said with a grunt.  “Okay?”

            “Uh huh.”  She nodded, and he set her gently on the floor at his feet.

            Hush came up behind them.  “Behold the heavenly vessel.”  He turned to the dark-haired woman, whose eyes had faded back to their original dark brown.  “Eve must be prepared,” he said, and she nodded sadly.

            “I understand,” she said quietly.  “I am the Magdalene, and I will ensure that Sa—that Eve is prepared.”  She turned and moved as if to leave the room, when a wailing cry reverberated throughout the ship, the scream of a wild thing in its death throes.  Harley flinched and put her hands to her ears.  The muted sound, less deafening, easier to listen to, was instantly recognizable.

            “Red!” Harley screamed, trying to drag herself off the floor.

            Hush had his gun on her instantly, but she didn’t care.  She reached out, clawing, trying to find some way to get herself off the floor, and then Mister J’s arms were around her holding her tight, and Mister J’s voice was in her ear, “Harls, hold still.  Unless you’d like me to break the other arm, of course.”

            She stilled instantly, the note of command in his voice something she was accustomed to obey unquestioningly, or at least immediately.  “But…Red…” she whimpered.  She felt his limbs quiver as he held her, and then, quite suddenly, he was rocking her back and forth.  “Shhh, Harley, don’t move.  It’s gonna be okay.”

            With his breath warm on her ear, she could almost believe it, until she heard a soft humming noise, and Hush smiled broadly.

            “Welcome, O second of the Nephilim.”

            Harley peered over Mister J’s shoulder and saw another child, about the same height and build as Gabby.  Unlike Gabby, she was smiling broadly, revealing glowing teeth that were faintly pointed.  Her long hair writhed as if alive, and she was humming beneath her breath.  She was covered in thick green liquid, and gnarled roots trailed from her stomach and back.

            “Shall I kill them all?” she said, in a breathless voice, her blank, pupil-less eyes passing over Harley eagerly.

            “No, daughter,” Hush said sternly, his voice heavy with the chiming inflection again.  “Second of the Nephilim, you must await the coming of your third and last sister, who will make you whole.  Then the Nephilim shall bring about the Apocalypse and the world shall be cleansed—anything is possible in the absence of the Dark Lord.”

            Harley thought that the plant-child’s face fell a little, but she tossed her hair and went to stand by Gabby.

            “Stay away from her!” Harley shrieked, fighting against Mister J, but he held her too tightly.

            “There’s nothing you can do—there’s nothing _I_ can do—Harley, please—I’m sorry…”  The words were tight and falling over one another, and she felt his tears hitting the top of her head as he repeated the last two statements, shaking with sobs.

            “Daddy,” she whispered, and suddenly she was holding him.  “Daddy, it’s gonna be okay.  Gabby!” she yelled.  “Don’t you play with—uh—Green.”

            Gabby’s still face tilted toward her.  “Play?”

            “Don’t stay near her.”

            “Why?” Gabby asked, and she took a half-step toward her mother.

            “Enough!” Hush roared.  He took a step toward Harley, and suddenly she was staring down the shining black barrel of a gun.   _Again_.  “You will be _silent_ ,” he said, through gritted teeth, the light in his eyes flickering wildly.  “I—we—have no use for you any longer, Eve, and if you _do not_ —“

            Harley swallowed carefully, but before she had a chance to respond or not respond, she heard the dark-haired woman’s small, clear voice.  “Eve is prepared, lords Hayyoth.”

            Hush’s attention turned away from Harley, and she sank back into Mister J’s arms, shaking, but stubbornly refusing to give up on Gabby.  _She’s mine_ , Harley thought.  _She’s my kid, and Mister J’s kid, and she’s gonna listen to me._

            “Then Adam must repair to Eve’s side.”  Hush looked over at the priest, who had stood this whole time facing inward, his eyes lit with an inner glow, his fists loosely clenched.

            “We will—take this vessel,” he said.  There was a slight quaver in his voice.  He strode past Harley and was gone.

            Moments later he returned.  “Eve has vanished,” he said.

            “ _What_?!” roared Hush, the glow in his eyes flickering again.

            “Her chains are broken and she is gone.”


	14. The Return of the Dark Lord

             Selina groaned into wakefulness, roused by the fiery prick of a needle in her throat.  She opened her eyes into Maggie’s dark ones.  “I’m sorry,” Maggie said, the light gleaming off the hypodermic she held in one hand.  “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

            Selina almost laughed at the incongruity of the statement.  Maggie sounded like the little girl she had known when she was much younger, timid and apologetic.  “That’s okay, Maggie,” she said simply.  “What are you doing?”

            Maggie twisted one hand into her long dark hair, another very child-like gesture.  “I’m preparing you, Sa—Eve.”

            “Preparing me for what?”  Selina fought down the panic and anger that threatened to overwhelm her.  It was very important that she stay focused and calm.  She needed to find out what was going on.  She needed to know if Harley and Ivy were in trouble—if they were even still alive.

            “I—I’m not really supposed to tell you,” Maggie demurred. “I mean, I don’t _know_ if I’m supposed to tell you.  I have to uphold the Hayyoth, you see.  I’m allowed so much autonomy—because I’m the Magdalene.”

            “Please?” Selina asked.  “I’m just so frightened and confused, Mags.”

  1. Like you.”



            “Maggie, I’m _not_ possessed.”

            “You just think you aren’t,” Maggie said gently.  “And that’s _perfectly_ normal, Sally.  Now I understand what I didn’t understand before, that you really are still in there, and while it wasn’t you who _took_ the relic, it was you who put it _back_.  You’re fighting the Cat, but in the end you’ll lose, because it’s stronger than you.”

            Despite herself, Maggie’s tone of voice was eminently reasonable, and the oddest little trickle of doubt started worming into Selina’s mind.  There was no doubt that Catwoman was part of her, of course, but she was so often at war with herself… _Helena.  I gave up Helena for nothing_.  No, she had given up Helena to protect her.  Or was it because she couldn’t bear to give up the free and easy life she led as Catwoman?  Or was it something even deeper and more sinister?  She shook her head.  That was…insane.  But she _had_ to play along.

            “Okay,” she said calmly.  “I don’t think I’m possessed, but maybe you’re right.  What are the Hayyoth planning to do?”

            “You see, Satan is gone now, and the Hayyoth have awakened.”

            “Satan is gone?  What do you mean?”

            “The Hayyoth slept because Satan kept them asleep, but when he was gone, they awoke.”

            Selina abandoned the idea of getting anything useful from this particular line of questioning and tried to take stock of where she was as Maggie continued to speak.  “The Hayyoth chose me—I know I’m not worthy, but they say I’m the Magdalene, like Mary Magdalene long ago, the only woman who can uphold the good in mankind.  They are going to cleanse Eve, so that she isn’t full of sin any longer.  You’re Eve, and so are your friends.”

            “How are they going to cleanse us?”

            Maggie shuffled her feet.  “I’m really not sure if I’m supposed to—“

            “Maggie, _please_.  I just need to know.”

            She saw her sister bite her lip.  “Okay,” she whispered.  “Your friend—the blond girl—she just gave birth to the first of the Nephilim, and your other friend will be generating the second.  But—Sally—you’re going to be the mother of the most powerful of the Nephilim.  And Father Brian will be the father.”

            Selina felt bile rising in the back of her throat.  She looked down at herself; she was clad only in a thin white robe and her hands and feet were chained to a slab or a bed which was tipped almost upright.  “You mean they’re sending the priest in, to—“

            Maggie’s face closed off a little more.  “It’s for your own good, Sally.”

            “ _Rape_?  _Rape_ is for my own good?!” Selina couldn’t contain herself anymore.  She couldn’t stay calm anymore.  She could feel the cold sweat beading on her palms and forehead.

            “The Cat will be _gone_!”  Maggie’s eyes suddenly burned with ferocious hatred.  “I know it’s you, Cat.  You’re trying to make me doubt, trying to make me feel like I’m doing the wrong thing!  Well, I’m not!  I won’t let you have my sister!”

            She turned and stalked out of the room.  Selina was left feeling cold and sick and trying to prepare herself mentally.  With a sick shock, she realized that the same thing must be happening to Ivy, and she hoped desperately that at least they would send Father Brian into both of them.  _Don’t let Hush have Ivy too,_ she begged.  If she had been religious, it would have been a prayer.

            Then she settled down to the business of trying to wriggle her way out of the chains binding her.  It didn’t work.  They were too tight, tight enough that her hands were tingling ever so slightly as the bloodflow to them was retarded.  After a few minutes, the thought of lying and waiting patiently to be raped and impregnated got to her badly enough that she started screaming and thrashing. 

            “Cat, shut up.”  The voice was rough, broken, almost unrecognizable.  Selina managed to gasp in a breath and subside from the sudden, embarrassing hysteria as Ivy dragged herself into an almost upright position beside her. 

            Ivy looked dead on her feet.  Her red hair was matted to her head with sweat, and there were great dark circles beneath her eyes, outlining her emaciated face.  Her green skin had almost taken on the texture of wood, lining her countenance and distorting it like an old woman’s.  All of which was nothing compared to the fact that she was split open from her chest to her stomach, oozing green and yellow pus.

            Selina drew in a horrified breath.  “Ivy, what in god’s name?”

            Ivy smiled crookedly.  “They missed a crack of sunlight,” she said, wincing.  “Then I found a dandelion by the window.  We’ve got to get out of here.  Especially you, Cat.”

            “Dear god,” Selina whispered.

            “It’s worse than it looks,” Ivy grunted.  “I mean, it looks worse than it—ow.”  She knelt by the chains that were holding Selina and made a gesture, her face contorting in pain again.  A pair of dandelions that Catwoman hadn’t even noticed suddenly burst upward, surging into swollen, monstrous life.  Little tendrils wound their way into the chains and expanded.  The chains burst with a muted jangle, and Selina slid to the floor.

            She stumbled dizzily to her feet.  They’d really done a number on her head—chloroform, maybe?  “Come on,” she said uncertainly to Ivy.  “Where’s Harls?”

            Ivy shook her head miserably.  “I don’t know.  I don’t even know if she’s—“  Her green eyes snapped shut for an instant and opened again.  “You’ve got to get out of here,” she said, sounding almost angry.  “If they get you, they’ve got their third Nephilim thing.  From what I can gather that would be a very bad thing for Gotham.”

            “Why, Ivy,” Selina commented as they hurried out into the corridor.  “You’re getting quite civic-minded.”

            Ivy rolled her eyes.  “For some insane reason, I think Harley would care.  And for some even _more_ insane reason, that means that I—feel like I should care.”

            Selina felt an impulse to touch Ivy lightly on the shoulder, but restrained herself.  Not something Ivy was likely to be able to accept from anyone except possibly Harley.

            They had reached a tightly-curving spiral staircase when vibration rattled through the whole building.  “You go first,” Ivy urged, and Selina reluctantly started to swing herself up the steps.  She was only halfway up when two golden blurs of light appeared at the end of the corridor.

            “Stop,” one of them said, and Selina nearly missed the next step.  The girlish figure was hovering in mid-air, and there was a horrible sense of sameness across her whole body.  Her large eyes were blank and there was a seamless transition from the lids to the eyes.  The second one looked almost the same except that her hair writhed and wriggled, and she was giggling, a high-pitched sound that went right through Selina’s body, leaving her shaken.

            “ _Go_!” Ivy yelled, shoving at her from behind, and Selina somehow forced frozen muscles to obey her and struggled toward the top.  She finally made it, pitching herself forward onto the cold stone floor of the church she had been in not two days ago.  Gasping breath into her lungs, she turned to help Ivy and saw that the red-haired woman had paused on the stairs, with the two golden—things—hovering below her.

            “Ivy!” Selina yelled.

            “Get the hell out of here!” Ivy shouted, screaming in pain as one of the two creatures shot a golden tendril out at her.  It left a dark, inflamed mark, and the arm it had touched hung loosely at Ivy’s side.  Selina almost turned to help, but realized that Ivy wasn’t trying to climb anymore.  She was very clearly not going to leave.  And the only reason she could have for that was if she was trying to stall them.  The only hope Ivy—and Harley, if she was alive—had was for Catwoman to get out now and come back for them.  With a pained glance backward, Selina started to run.

            She was a good runner.  She was built small and lithe, and god knew she’d had plenty of practice.  But ever since Hush had cut out her heart, she had been a little off, just a beat here and there, a weakness of step, a moment of dizziness.  Not much, but enough to dull her edge.  And now, sick with chloroform and agonizing with worry over Maggie and Harley and yes, even Ivy, her lungs were burning and her head was swimming, and she covered ground almost unforgivably slowly.

            She burst out of the church, her bare feet slapping the wet ground.  She didn’t know where she was going—to the police station, maybe?  It was galling to admit it, but they _needed_ help.  She reached up and fingered the sore spot on her neck and wondered what the injection would do to her by itself.

            The streets were strangely empty, but then she realized she had no idea what time it was.  It was dark.  It might be three in the morning, and there weren’t too many people out at that time of night, after all.  Though there were usually some…She caught her foot on an uneven stone and tripped, just managing to steady herself.

            There was a strange glow in the sky at the edge of the city, and then she noticed that the streetlights lining the street were all dead, but Gotham still glowed, like a used shell of radioactive waste.  She tried to increase her pace, but the breath sobbed in her lungs, and she couldn’t.  She turned wildly down a side-street, and then realized that it was a cul-de-sac.  Typical.

            She was panicking.  She couldn’t afford to panic.  Besides, she was _Catwoman_.  This was _ridiculous._   There was probably no one even able to _find_ —

            “Eve.”

            She turned, with a sinking feeling in her stomach.  One of the golden creatures was floating at the edge of the alley.  She giggled her high-pitched little laugh.

            “Gabby’s not here,” she said.  “Gabby’s still with Plant Mommy.  I’m not supposed to kill you, Eve, but I _want_ to kill you.”

            Selina felt the brick wall behind her and wished for a weapon, though she wasn’t at all certain a weapon would work on this creature.  Grimly, she backed into the fence at the end of the road, wondering how long it would take her to climb it in this condition.  She didn’t want to take her eyes off her enemy, who giggled again and floated forward.

            “I want to kill things,” the thing that had ripped itself from Ivy’s womb said.  “I think I’m going to kill you.”

            Selina threw herself backwards in a desperate somersault onto her hands and back, her legs just hooking the fence, as she swung herself upward.  Before she could finish clearing it, blinding pain struck her leg, and she gasped and fell, her arms and head smacking painfully into the pavement beneath her.  The clear little giggle came again, and the—thing—crouched over her.  “I think I might be able to kill you with my hands,” it said.  “I think that will be fun.”

            It locked its small hands about her throat and pressed.  She tried to throw it off, but it was obscenely strong, and its hands burned like acid.  She coughed and choked.  She was already going dizzy and some little clinical side of her brain noted that the choke was cutting off the blood flow, not the air flow.

            _Interesting_ …blackness threatened at the side of her vision, and the only thing she could do was lie and be grateful that at least her heartbeat still thundered in her ears, getting louder and louder and—

            Gone.  The pressure and pain were gone.  An indignant shriek rang in her ears, and she was flying.  She turned her poor, painful body inward and managed to blink up at the blurry square chin beneath the black cowl.

            “God damn it, Dick,” she said weakly.  “Don’t go telling everybody I need you to rescue me now.  My reputation would never survive.”

            “Dick?  Did the oxygen deprivation kill a few brain cells, Selina?”

            At the sound of his voice, she felt every muscle in her body tense and flood with longing.  “Bruce?” she whispered, and before she could stop herself, she was sobbing in his arms.


	15. The Conquest of the Hayyoth

           “Red?  R-red?  Please be alive.”  The voice brought her slowly back to consciousness.  This sort of thing seemed to be happening a lot lately.  She blinked her eyes open into Harley’s concerned face.

            “I’m—awake,” she croaked.

            “Oh _Red_!”  Harley threw her arms around her, and Ivy gasped and tried to push her away.

            “Not so _hard_!  I’m in _pain_ here!”

            “I’m sorry!”  Harley pulled back.  “I thought you might be dead and Mistah J said he didn’t know either and—“

            “The Joker?  The _Joker’s_ here?”  _And he isn’t attacking me, cracking a joke or otherwise making himself obvious?_

            “Mistah J’s right here, silly!”  Harley moved aside a little, allowing Ivy to catch a glimpse of the green hair and dead white face of the Joker.  Wonderful.

            “Miss—I don’t know your name, I guess. Sorry.  You look pretty bad.  Harley was saying you were her friend.”

            Ivy stared at him in shock.  The taut lines of his face had relaxed a little into an almost—shy?—demeanor, the bright red lips were turned—down?—slightly.

            “I think they did somethin’ to Mistah J,” Harley whispered.  “He’s been actin’ sorta…weird.”

            Weird for the Joker—did that make him normal?  She glanced at him again out of the corner of her eye.  His left hand was trembling spastically, but apart from that he seemed quite—calm. 

            “I’m Ivy,” she said and was quite pleased to note that her tired voice was somehow steady.  She took slow stock of her surroundings.  They were back down in the basement somewhere, but there was a thrumming pulse of energy on her pinky.  Glancing down, she saw that it was bathed in a tiny, watery ray of sunlight that had somehow wended its way down here.

            “I got you into sun as much as I could, Red,” Harley said anxiously.  “Well, Mistah J did, he was real helpful, I can’t do too much.  And we gave you most of the water, because I said you needed it.  I can’t believe you’re alive.”

            Ivy could hardly believe it either.  She wasn’t eager to dwell on the past twenty-four hours’ or so worth of memories, but she couldn’t quite escape from the dark place in the back of her mind where she lay in her chains in the dark and fought the thing growing in her body with everything she had, desperate to cause a miscarriage.  It had been nothing remotely like a pregnancy, not even the radical perversion of a pregnancy that Harley had had, and it was _not_ her child.  It was not even a child.  It had ripped itself out from inside her in a way that would have killed a human host, and Ivy admitted, probably only the modicum of sun she had been getting had stopped it from killing her too.

            She’d also been lucky that the other one of those—things—had been the one to stay behind after they subdued her.  “Her” child would probably have pulled her head off out of curiosity.  Harley’s just squatted beside her and asked her questions until Hush showed up, and she didn’t remember anything after that until now.  But if the crazy one of the—what had they called them?—Nephilim?—had gone, then what about—“Selina?” she said, trying to sit up and falling back with a groan as pain lanced down her midsection.

            Harley shrugged.  “She never came back.  I guess she must’ve got away because we heard your kid come screaming back like the devil was on her trail.  I heard ‘em start yatterin’ about the Dark Lord or something and they were saying they were gonna be on the move soon, but I don’t really know what they meant.”

            “I don’t—know either,” the Joker put in.  “I’m sorry I’m so—confused.  I’ve been—I’ve been having a bad day.”

            Ivy glanced at him again.  Now his entire arm was shaking, the one that was not wrapped tightly—protectively, even—around Harley’s shoulder.  His mouth, also, had begun to twitch, a spasm that seemed determined to maneuver the lips into a quirky grin.  She tried to ignore it.

            “It’s okay, Mistah J,” Harley said brightly.  “You’re gonna be fine!  Do you want me to do anything?”

            “Of course not, baby-doll.  You’re hurt, you’re not allowed to take care of me, I’m gonna take care of you.”  He kissed her gently on the forehead, and Harley gave a completely enraptured sigh.  Ivy rolled her eyes and was starting to wonder if she might not have been better off dead, or at least unconscious.  Surely anything would be better than—

            The door opened, and Hush entered.  Ivy quickly readjusted her priorities, managing to drag herself upright and in front of Harley.  She was amused and maybe a little—jealous?—to see the Joker doing the same thing.  He didn’t stop in front of Harley, though; he put himself in front of both of them, which gave Ivy a bit of a shock.  She might hate chivalry, but it was still _really_ strange to see the _Joker_ displaying it, of all people.

            Hush’s eyes were glowing bright gold, and there was a strange golden aura around his head and hovering over his shoulders.  Flanking him were the two Nephilim.  Ivy thought about the odds.  Three versus three, but two of _their_ three were badly injured.  She didn’t like those odds.  If the Joker could even be relied on to hold his own in a fight now.

            “Get up, Eve,” Hush said.

            “N-neither of these women can stand,” the Joker said.  “They’re both inj-jured.”

            Hush just eyed the scene impassively.  “You will get up, or we will kill you here.”

            “Can you stand?” the Joker said quickly to Ivy.  “I can get Harls up.”

            “I don’t know,” Ivy gritted out.

            “Listen, Weeds, either you stand or you’re going to get whacked.”

            He flashed her a look that let her catch sight of the grin that formed on his face and disappeared almost as suddenly.  Despite shaking her to the core, the idea that they might regain the Joker on their side, _much as she hated him_ , was vaguely encouraging, and somehow Ivy managed to do as he said.  The Joker hoisted Harley into his arms, so carefully that he drew only a small gasp of pain from her.

            “Come,” Hush said.  “Our conquest begins now.”

            “But what of our sister?” one of the two Nephilim asked, and Ivy recognized it as Harley’s—as the thing that had come out of Harley.  It looked up with strangely sweet, empty eyes.  “Hello, Mother,” it said to Harley, and Hush rounded on it.

            “You will address her as _Eve_!  She has not yet been fully _cleansed_.”

            “Yes, Hayyoth.”

            “You can call me Mama, Gabs,” Harley put in wistfully, but subsided as Hush turned toward her, his golden eyes blazing.  The glow behind him flared up like flames in a fireplace, and his voice took on the chiming of thousands of bells as he proclaimed, “You will be _silent_!”

            Ivy, with her sensitivity to sunlight and natural plants, could feel just the barest hint of something terribly off about the golden energy that was boiling around him.  It frightened her almost more than the fact that her body was still almost opened up down the middle and leaking green fluids.  Harley, maybe sensing the same thing, or maybe just listening to common sense for once in her life, closed her mouth and cast her eyes to the ground.  The Joker rocked her quietly back and forth, though Ivy could see the sweat standing out on his brows at the weight.  Harls wasn’t fat, but she wasn’t a little girl, and her body had to be heavy from the strange pregnancy.

            “Now _come_ ,” Hush commanded.  “The conquest must begin without your sister, for the Dark Lord has returned and if we do not begin now, our endeavors will be doomed.”

            The sad little party started out, Ivy limping and wincing with every step, the Joker’s breathing becoming more and more labored.

            “You okay, Daddy?” Harley murmured as they went up the spiral staircase where the Nephilim had chased Ivy down some time before.

            “Fine, Harls,” the Joker murmured back, but Ivy noticed that one eye was twitching spasmodically.  She shot him a sympathetic look, then was astonished at herself, but he gave her a tired nod.

            They were joined at the church door by a dark-haired woman and a man in priest’s attire, both of whose eyes were glowing, though not quite as intensely as Hush’s.  However, as the two came to stand next to him, the glow around them intensified until it looked as if the three were each walking in spotlights which merged into one large spotlight—except there was no source of light but the ground beneath their feet.

            “Bring forth the chariot!” Hush thundered, and the two Nephilim flew forward, the non-Gabby one giggling obscenely.  Her high-pitched laugh had been going on at a low volume nearly the entire time, and Ivy cursed herself for noticing it now.  She’d never be able to ignore it again now.

            When the—when ‘Gabby’—she couldn’t believe she was thinking of it in terms of a _name_ but she needed a way to differentiate them in her head—when Gabby and the abomination returned, they were, for lack of a better word, driving something that looked like a truck with a wide flat plywood rim around the cab and over the back part.  The letters ‘y f’ emblazoned on a tattered piece of colorful cloth that trailed from one side suggested rather sadly that it had been part of a Gotham fraternity float during one of the yearly parades.  Neither of the Nephilim had their hands on the wheel, and the truck itself made no noise, but the headlights were on (were they?  Or did the golden glow stem from another source?) and it moved forward, gliding to a gentle stop in front of them.

            Hush looked at them for a long, frightening moment, while the glow around him and the other two began to pulse as if building in energy.  “Eve,” he said, looking at both Ivy and Harley.

            Ivy just stared back, but Harley answered.  “Yeah?”

            “Are you ready to be cleansed?”

            Harley gave a quick little frightened glance at Ivy, who swallowed.  If they said no, he might very well kill them.  But if they said yes—she stared at the blank golden eyes of Hush, and the dark-haired woman, and the priest.  So swallowed up inside themselves that they were hollow and leaking light.  She steadied herself, letting the rays of the morning sun that were peeking up over the horizon drive strength into her veins and limbs.  “Eff off,” she said, and Harley nodded an affirmative.

            “Very well,” Hush said.  He turned to the Nephilim.  “Bind them at the foot of the chariot,” he said.  “Eve and the Serpent, who has performed his part admirably.”

            The Joker spat at his feet, and then a long, low laugh escaped from his lips, sending a frisson of terror down Ivy’s spine, followed by a stab of vindictive glee.  If the Joker came back, she didn’t care what the Hayyoth had on their side, they were _screwed_.

            She immediately felt guilty, glancing over at his mobile face as her abomination giggled and bound her hands and feet together, tightly enough that her fingers and toes started to tingle almost immediately.  The Joker—or whoever he was right now—was looking at Harley with an expression that even Ivy, who wasn’t exactly good at reading people, could tell was complete devotion, and she was struck by a thought.

            Would she oppose Harley’s running back to the Joker the way she did if he _weren’t_ the abusive bastard all of Gotham knew and hated?  She felt an odd stab of jealousy, but shrugged it off.  This really wasn’t the time to worry about something like that.  And with chagrin, she had to admit she’d take the Joker over the Hayyoth any day.  Better the danger you know…plus one who _wasn’t_ apparently supernaturally powerful and had an eerie habit of possessing people.

            Day was breaking over Gotham as the procession started out in eerie silence.  Ivy’s legs were splayed beneath her uncomfortably, and her neck was stiff with forcing her head not to bow.  She wished she could sneak a hand to Harley, bound between her and the Joker, who was crying quietly.

            “Harls,” she murmured.  “It’s okay.  I know it hurts.”

            “It ain’t that,” Harley whispered back, though her face was drawn and white with pain.  “It’s Gabby.”

            Ivy really wanted a desk.  Or a wall.  Anything she could smash her forehead into until she stopped hearing Harley’s voice _saying_ that.  What was _wrong_ with her friend?  Could she just _only_ care about maniacal creatures completely divorced from reality?  _What does that say about you?_ a nasty little voice whispered in the back of her mind.

            “Harley…” she started, but the Joker cut in.

            “It’s gonna be okay,” he said.  “She’s our kid, we’ll get her back.”

            Ivy wanted to scream.  _Everybody_ on this stupid float was completely insane except for her!  Why was the Joker just as bloody crazy when he _wasn’t_ crazy as when he was?

            Just as she thought she might be capable of saying something without ranting about how ridiculous everyone was being, she felt a chill run down her spine and, looking over, she saw that Gabby was squatting between her and Harley.

            “Gabby!” Harley said in delight.

            “Hello,” Gabby said.  “Hello, Mother Eve.”

            “I’d rather you called me Mama, but that’s okay too!” Harley said happily.

            “What does it mean to be Mother?”

            “Oh, uh…”

            “Harley.  She’s some kind of extraterrestrial life form.  She’s not a human child.  The birds and the bees _really_ aren’t what we need to be worrying about right now,” Ivy said tiredly.  She glanced over and saw from Harley’s blush that she had been right on the money with that one.

            “Well, see, it means that you and this other guy—did a thing—and you had a baby.  That’s not really important, though, I guess.  What it _really_ means is that if you’re a mother, you gotta love your kid and protect them, and the kid’s gotta listen to her mommy, because Mommy knows best.”

            “Why?”

            “Cos,” Harley said simply.  “Mostly cos she loves her kid so much.”

            “What’s love?”

            Ivy shut her eyes.  If there was _one_ thing she didn’t want to hear in what were probably her last hours on earth, it was Harley’s views on love.  She’d heard them already, ad nauseam.  Pretty much any time the word came up in casual conversation, or even if it _didn’t_.  This time Harley _didn’t_ start with a squeal, though.  Instead, her voice got quiet.

            “Love is when you care enough about somebody else that you’d die so that they wouldn’t,” she said, and Ivy saw her glance over at the Joker, who gave her a wan but meaningful smile.

            “The Hayyoth say love is doing what is best for someone, whether they want it or not,” Gabby stated.  “You see, the earth is coming out to greet us.”

            Ivy, who had been lulled into a half-stupor, came suddenly awake with avengeance.  The streets of Gotham were crowded with people.  They moved with the heavy steps and loose-jawed gaze of sleepwalkers, and the golden haze that hung around them was not the light of the sun, which hung arrested at the edge of the sky.

            “It matters if they want it,” Harley said suddenly.  “Not always, but sometimes.  It ain’t always clear what you should do when you love somebody.  Even following your heart gets kinda murky sometimes.” 

            “Then how do you know what to do?  I thought you were supposed to listen and God would tell you.  Or the Hayyoth—our fathers.”

            Harley looked at her, wan and white.  “You _don’t_ always know what to do, kiddo.  You just do what seems best at the time and you _hope_.”

            “Yes,” the Joker put in, his voice slurred and almost drunk.  “Hope.  Tha’s the ticket.”  Then he continued, his voice threatening to break.  “I love you, Harls, but I’m—having—a—really bad day.” 

            “It’s gonna be okay,” Harley said, and then Hush alighted in front of them, the glow behind him beating the air like wings.  The crowd of Gothamites looked silently up at him.

            “What are you doing, first child of the Nephilim?” he asked, and the abomination landed after him, her shoulders still shaking with silent laughter.

            “I am speaking,” Gabby replied calmly.

            “You speak with Eve and with the Serpent, who would obliterate us, child.”

            “I’m just confused,” Gabby said, cocking her head on one side.

            Hush shook his head.  “Of course you are.  Then, first child of the Nephilim, you must begin the cleansing, rid yourself of the echo of Eve’s lying words inside your brain.”

            “I must?”

            The dark-haired woman and the priest also appeared from somewhere, to stand, heads bowed, on either side of Hush, flanking him like some kind of zombie sentinels.  Hush gestured with his hand and the glow that was now leaking from within it formed itself into the shape of a lance, its point deadly sharp.  He handed it to Gabby, who looked down at it and then back up at him.

            “It is for her own good,” Hush said, voice ringing with the heavy chime of resonant bells.  “And for yours.”

            Gabby lifted the spear.  Ivy, suddenly realizing what was intended, screamed, “Don’t hurt her!”  The Joker screamed too, a wordless, high-pitched roar of painful sound.  But Harley, as the lance came down, just sat and blinked up at her daughter with confused, crushed blue eyes.


	16. The Golden Garden

            Gold. 

            Plated gold.

            Motes of gold playing through the air, and the breeze on a warm summer day.  Early summer, probably.  The smell of pollen in the air wafting to his nose.  Everything was so pleasant, but something was wrong.

            He wasn’t sure why he thought that.  He looked around.

            He was in a garden.  Soft green grass lay under his bare feet, giving gently beneath his footsteps as he walked, springing back into position as he moved on.  Glancing up, he saw that the sky overhead arched blue and inviting above him.  Everything was still and calm, with a tinge of gold hanging about it.

            But there was something wrong, and he needed to find it.  The wind rushed up around him in a little swirling gust, carrying gentle, jangling music to his ears, and he began to amble toward it.

            He walked through several stands of trees, and was distracted by their luscious fruits, so he paused for a moment and, reaching up, plucked one from its stem.  It was a pear, soft beneath his fingertips, which burst sweet and juicy on his tongue.  Somehow, it was a little too sweet.

            He wandered toward the music, swirling golden motes scintillating in the soft light of the afternoon, still  trying to find out what he felt was wrong.  Everything here was calm, delightful, quiet.

            The source of the melody was a young girl, whose long, curling, dark hair hid her body from view, as she plucked the strings of a giant, golden harp.  She looked up dreamily and waved as he approached, but she did not speak.  He smiled at her.  Seeing her here relieved a nagging, fearful suspicion, but he couldn’t quite tell what that suspicion had been, now that it was gone.

            “Good afternoon, my daughter,” he said, and she nodded at him.  “Can you tell me what the song you are playing is?”

            “It’s a lament,” she said softly.

            “Are you sad?”

            “I miss my sister, you see.  But they tell me she will arrive soon.”  She gestured to a second harp, leaning against a tree.  The one she played was golden; the other was dark ebony lined with silver. 

            “Where are we?” he asked, curiously.

            “In the garden,” she replied simply.  Then she smiled and placed her hands back on the harp and began to strum out the lament once again.  He stood silently watching her for a moment.  Her soft face smiled smooth and unlined, her red lips parted slightly to show perfect white teeth.  He gazed at her with the strangest feeling of recognition, as if he had seen her somewhere before, but at the same time, there was something off about her face.  Studying her for several minutes longer, he came to the conclusion that it was symmetrical, and that somehow it shouldn’t be.

            He wasn’t sure why he thought it shouldn’t be.  He wasn’t really sure of anything.  Waving at her loosely with one limp hand, he started down the path again.  The sunlight was warm but not hot on his back and hair, and the cool grass cushioned his feet. 

            _This is the right way,_ a soft voice whispered in the back of his mind.   _This is the right place_.  And yet something still niggled at another part of him, eating at him, and he was forced to walk onward, when all he really wanted to do was to sit down and listen to the music and let the sunshine wash over him.

            He came to a section of the garden where the roses had grown tall and thick, opening into bright, sparkling yellow-gold flowers, with strong, intoxicating smells wafting from them, unleashing a torrent of glittering pollen onto the breeze.  Here the path ended, but he began to push himself through.  He scratched himself on a thorn and paused to watch the blood ooze from the shallow cut, black in the golden light.  The prick of pain was sluggish and slow in coming.

            _Come away, come, come away._   He shook his head slowly and felt his feet moving away from the roses, but he didn’t quite like to turn around.  One little part of his brain wanted him to go far, far away, but another little part wanted him to go forward, into the roses, into the pain.  He couldn’t decide which part to listen to, so he began to make his way along the line of bushes.

            He came quite suddenly to a clearing lined by birch trees, whose dark, sooty eyes gazed benevolently at him.  In the center of the clearing sat another man, whom he could not see very clearly.  A tall, sturdily-built man with dark hair, whose outline was fuzzy with gold, his chin resting on his hand.  He began to look up, and his eyes sizzled with light so blinding that the first man had to look away, and he backtracked quickly, feeling more confused than before.

            The breeze tickled at the back of his neck, and he came back to the place he had tried to go through the roses.  The spot was disturbed.  A few crushed leaves fluttered earthward silently, and suddenly he knew what was wrong.  There was no birdsong.

            The sudden realization was frightening, and before he knew it, the forward-going part of his mind was pushing him into the roses.  They caught at him and cut him like dozens of tiny claws, but he kept going and a painful moment later burst out of the roses, bleeding from a number of small cuts, the blood still gleaming blackish-red.

            Something in front of him burst into sharp laughter.  The slender creature was wrapped around an archway like a vine, half-hidden amongst leafy green.  Around him, framing the same archway, bright red apples bobbed and weaved in a heavy wind.  The Serpent unwound itself slowly, undulating, the wild laughter crescendoing.

            “Gooooooood morning, Father,” it said in a jaunty voice.  “Looks like SOMEONE took the road less traveled.”

            Father.  Father Brian.  _I am Father Brian_.  “I do not know, my son.”

            It whooped with helpless laughter.  “I kinda doubt that you’re my old man.”

            He fixed it with a sarcastic look and it subsided.  “Yeah, not my best effort.  I feel my sense of humor has been cut off by divine intervention.  _Hell_ of a problem, really.”  Its slitted yellow eyes glittered.           

            “So you’re the Serpent in the garden,” Father Brian said.  “You’re supposed to be tempting Adam and Eve?”

            “Uh huh.  Sure.  That…works.  Now, to give you a taste from the Tree of Knowledge:  what’s your name?”

            _Adam, leave now_.  The soft voice was a little sterner now, but Father Brian shook it off.

            “I’m Brian.  Brian Young.”  Images of the garden threatened to overwhelm the name again, but as he muttered the Lord’s Prayer, they melted away before the images of himself in concentration beneath the priest who had first given him an inkling that his calling was to be the same.

            The Serpent laughed again.  “Heh, they’re in your head, huh? They think people are so easy to use—they’re right of course, but they also thought I was a person,” he crooned.  “Looks like I’ve gotten to my babe, too, since she’s giving them hell.  Now.  Here’s where I tempt you.  I need some…help.”

            “Some help?  I’d be pleased to offer any aid I can, although given the setting and your—appearance—I have to wonder about the wisdom of acceding to any of your requests…”

            The Serpent seemed to smile.  “Okay, so, here’s the thing, your worshipfulness.  Out there?  Someone’s gunning for my girl.  For Harley Quinn.  Now, I don’t know what your opinion on our general activity is, and I don’t much care.  Thing is…she can be pretty entertaining when nothing interesting is happening.  And I do so hate being bored.”

            “Out ‘there’? Out where?”

            The Serpent made a stabbing gesture with its tail towards the archway.  “That world.  Home.  Y’know, earth.  That place.  They’re trying to make it a paradise…and, if I recall my Genesis, paradise is pretty damn boring.  Nothing to do but run around naming things and ‘begetting’ people.  Not that I mind that last one, of course.”

            Why did Brian feel as if he believed this Serpent?  Why, when the voice in the back of his mind grew bigger and darker and more fearful?  Was it just the persuasiveness of the silver-tongued beast?  His head began to ache ferociously.

            The Hayyoth.  They were out there.  Out there in Gotham.  They were going to kill the pretty child he had watched and helped give birth.  They had hidden him here to keep him from interfering.  His face must have given him away, because the Serpent started laughing again.  “That’s right, Mister Preacher-man.  They’re trying to keep you and me out of the game.”

            The voice in the back of his mind was howling, the wild chiming of bells in the wind, wordless now but fearful.  The sky above his head was brightening, the light growing stronger and harsher with each moment.  He looked back at the Serpent.

            “So!  What’ll it be?  Follow these ‘angels’ or make one little deal with the devil?”

            Offering up a quick prayer to the Lord God, Brian decided quickly.  God would _not_ try to stop him from listening to the Serpent by force, and force was quickly manifesting itself as the winds in the garden began to howl, their jangling song screaming with discord in his ears.  Pain lanced through his head, and he stumbled forward.

            The garden dissolved in shards of golden light, and the last thing he saw before the world reassembled itself was the wry grin of the Serpent.

            He was standing a little to the side as the Nephilim child raised a spear made of light above the tired, crumpled woman who half-sat, half-lay, bound by ropes on a crude platform before her.  Everything was unnaturally silent as he took two bounds forward and grabbed the end of the spear in one hand.  Burning agony lanced through his hand and arm, as if he had grabbed a sparking live wire with his bare hand.  He was unable to move as the child turned and stared at him, unable to move as something within him forced him to his knees. 

            The spear was raised and brought down, and as it burrowed through his body, he could not make a sound.  He choked and stared up into the blank, questioning golden eyes.  Her hands tightened on the spear as if to pull it out and resume her work, when another voice spoke, cutting through the sudden cacophony that had jangled into his head as the spear sank into him.

            “Stop.”

            The child turned, stepping sideways away from him, and now, even in his blurring vision, he could see the person who had spoken alight behind her, dark wings fanning the air loosely.

            “Who are you?” said the golden child, her hand still loosely on the spear.

            She was about the same height as the first child, but her body was as dark as midnight or ebony, and it seemed to absorb any light that hit it, a cool, calming relief from the hard brightness of the other two.  She turned her shadowy face toward them and seemed to smile.  “I’m the third and last of the Nephilim…sister.”


	17. The Third and Last of the Nephilim

           “Selina, what—“  He seemed a little disoriented, but maybe it was just that fact that she had dissolved in tears that she was desperately trying to control, sobbing into the front of his black costume.

            “Oh, God, Bruce, I thought you were never coming back,” she managed to choke out.  “God, I’m sorry.  I’m sorry…”  Another wail burst from her throat, and she tried unsuccessfully to choke it back. 

            “Selina!  Selina, it’s all right.  It’s going to be all right.”  He sounded half-reassuring, half-panicked, and she burst out with a with a wailing gasp.

            “Where have you _been_ , Bruce, oh _god_ , you have no idea what—what’s been happening—Ivy and Harley and—“

            “What did they do _now_?”

            His resigned tone of voice got her to giggle a little through her tears and yet again she wondered at herself, Catwoman, behaving like a giddy teenage girl.  Maybe it was something to do with the thing they’d injected her with—her clutch on Bruce tightened.  “We’ve got to get back to Wayne Manor,” she said.  “I need you to run some tests on me.”

            “Right.”  Just like Bruce—didn’t ask any questions, just heard the urgency in her voice and bowed to it.  She still couldn’t believe it.  After all this time—she ran her hand wonderingly across the stubbly chin; sure enough, it was squarer and solider than Dick’s, whom she’d always thought was a little effeminate.

            “Bruce?”

            “Yes?”

            The wind was rushing past her face.  The lights of Gotham spread out below flashed past them at a speed that would have been too fast for anyone else to run, but they were half-running, half-gliding.  “Where’s the Batmobile?”

            He sighed.  “Probably at the manor.  At least, I hope it’s at the manor.”

            “You _hope_?  What’s going _on_?”

            He was silent for a moment, and she was flooded with irritation and paradoxically relief.  She hadn’t missed being annoyed at him, but it was so _right_.  So natural.  She couldn’t afford to get complacent, though.  “ _Bruce_?”

            “What—day is it?”

            She opened her mouth to reply and drew a blank.  Everything had happened so fast in the last few days.  Harley had gone out with Hush on—Thursday?  Friday, maybe?  And it had been—what—two days since then?  “Sunday?” she hazarded.

            “What’s the—date?”

            “Bruce, if I’m shaky on the day, I’m not exactly going to be able to give you the date.”

            “Ballpark?”

            “Some time in August!  Late August, I think!”

            “Mmm.”

            “What’s all this _about_?”

            He sighed.  “It’s not really important, Selina.”

            She felt her lips thinning.  “Fine.  You know what else isn’t important?  The fact that Harley, whom I’ve been _rooming_ with for the last few _months_ and _by the way_ she’s probably been more law-abiding than _I_ have, has just got knocked up by some kind of supernatural— _thing_ —that calls itself an angel and has Hush—who’s _still_ wearing your face—on its side.”

            “ _What_?”

            “Translation:  we’ve been busy while you were missing.”

            She saw his jaw firm up.  “What do I need to know?  Tell me while I take you back to Wayne Manor.”

            “Fine.  But you _are_ going to tell me what happened, some time when Gotham is out of crisis mode.”

            He cracked half a smile.  “Deal.”

            She took a deep breath and launched into an explanation of the past three or so days.  Bruce interjected a question every so often, but as she continued, he became more and more distant, until, looking up at him, she saw her face reflected in the mirror-like surfaces of his eyes, and she had the chilling sensation that Bruce was gone again…

            “Bruce!” she said, sharply, and the frightening distance left his eyes; there was almost fondness in his face as he looked down at her and kissed her tenderly on her forehead.

            “Sorry, Selina,” he said.  “I’m worried.”

            “You too, huh?” she grumbled.

            He sighed.  “I’ll explain when we get back to the manor, okay?”

            “Like there’s something I can do about it…”  But she couldn’t help feeling that there was a niggling hole inside her that had been suddenly filled again, and no matter how dire things were, there was a little part of her that could find no emotion but almost desperate joy.

            Bruce was panting a little by the time they reached Wayne Manor, and she looked at him with worry.  He never tired this quickly. 

            They entered through the Batcave.  As Bruce stripped off his cowl, she could see the heavy, dark circles beneath his eyes.  There were lines on his face that hadn’t been there the last time she had seen him, and in the brighter light she could see that the heavy stubble over his cheeks was speckled with white, but he smiled at her and drew her in for a kiss.

            “God, it’s good to see you,” he said, and Selina felt the easy tears springing to her eyes far too quickly again, as she also felt a swift stab of triumph.  _Take that, Talia_!  This really wasn’t the time, though.

            “We’ve got to do something to rescue Ivy and Harley,” she said.  “And before you start making noises about rescuing villainesses, both of them have been on their best behavior while you’ve been gone.”  _Well, mostly_.  But now wasn’t the time to make such _clarifications._

“I wasn’t going to say that,” Bruce said, moving swiftly toward the giant computer and pressing the power button.  “Quite the opposite.  I think I’ve heard the word _Hayyoth_ somewhere before.  Barbara couldn’t tell you anything?”

            “Nothing but what she found on Wikipedia.”

            “Then it’s probably something I saw in my own files…that’s strange…”

            The sound of a door creaking made them both look up.  Selina was instantly on the alert, but Bruce put a hand on her arm.  “Don’t worry, it’s just—“ He paused as the barrel of a gun was set close into the back of his head.  “Alfred?”

            The manservant was wearing a worn robe, his head was bound up in bandages and one arm was a sling, but his hand was completely steady on the trigger.  “I suggest you don’t move, Mr. Elliot.”

            “Alfred, it’s me.”

            She saw a slight quiver run through the manservant’s frame, but he didn’t move.  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t immediately take your word for it.  Turn around.”

            Bruce turned slowly, and she saw Alfred’s eyes widen ever-so-slightly.  “Master Wayne.  My god.”

            Bruce nodded, with a tired smile.  “I’m back.”

            The hand holding the gun immediately relaxed.  “I’m sorry, sir.  There’s been a great deal of trouble in Gotham lately, much of it stemming from Mr. Thomas Elliot.”

            “So Selina has given me to understand.”

            Alfred nodded at her.  “Miss Kyle.”  She gave him a smile in return.  “Master Wayne, shall I get you something to eat or drink?”

            “No, I don’t think—“ he paused.  “Actually, yes, I’m quite hungry, Alfred, I’d appreciate that.”

            “Very good, sir.  You too, Miss Kyle?”

            “Yes, please, Alfred.”

  1. I assure you that if it had been in my power to prevent it, I would have.”



            She managed another smile.  “I know, Alfred.  Thanks.”

            He paused again on the steps.  “Welcome back, Master Wayne.”  Bruce looked up from the computer and smiled deeply.

            “Thank you, Alfred.  It’s good to be back.”

            As Alfred turned and made his way up the stairs, she reached out and put her hand over Bruce’s, and he paused for a brief glance, a brief smile, and for the first time since this whole thing had started, she felt as if maybe…just maybe…they had a chance.

            After a few minutes, Bruce sat back and sighed.  “I thought I’d seen it,” he said, and she leaned over his shoulder and looked at the screen.

            _Hayyoth_ , it flashed.  _357 hits_. 

            “What—“

            “I was skimming the journals of an ancestor from the seventeenth century.  I thought I had seen it before.  Look.”

            “ _…call themselves the_ _Hayyoth, which appears to be a reference to the Old Testament…”_

            “What?” Selina breathed.

            “I’ll pull up all of the relevant passages.  Just a minute.”

            A click of the mouse and they were staring at a faded page filled with well-formed, slanting letters.

            “ _Today, a strange thing.  Last night I wrote of the strange falling star, orange in the sky, that my dear Joanna and I thought might be a meteorite.  We went out to the field today, thinking to discover a rock such as Jeffrey told us of, but instead we found something much stranger._

_We found a man staggering out of an iron craft which had embedded itself in the earth.”_

She bent over, reading quickly over his back, trying to get the story to unfold properly.  The thin handwriting continued; it was difficult to read from this angle, but she continued to follow the story of the stranger who had appeared, apparently confused, unable to speak or interact properly.

            “What _is_ this, Bruce?”

            “It’s the diary of a man called Richard Wayne.”

            “Where do the Hayyoth come into it?”

            He shook his head.  “I can’t remember.  I read these when I was a kid, when I was bored on a couple vacations.  Family history isn’t something that is particularly relevant to Batman, or to Bruce Wayne.”

            “We’d better get reading, then,” she said grimly.

            Slowly, the story unfolded.  For several days, Richard Wayne, his wife Joanna, and his daughter Emily took turns sitting by the stranger, who had grown ill, reading to him from the bible.  On the seventh day, he awoke and spoke a few words.  He revealed that had no memory of anything before having woken in the field.  He told them that the words they had spoken to him while he was sleeping had resonated with him.

            For some time, he nearly disappeared from the diary, except for normal mentions here and there.  He went by the name “Adam,” but made no secret that it was not really his name.  Selina grew weary of skimming down the page; she was reaching out to click onward when Bruce’s hand on her arm stopped her.

            “Wait,” he said.  “Look at this.”

            “ _Adam has begun to pay court to Emily.  I approve of this turn of events, for he is a good, solid young man, who will be able to provide for her, but Joanna does not agree.  She says she finds him ‘strange’ still and that it bothers her how often he quotes the Bible.  I find this to be ludicrous—how can his piety be seen as a negative quality?  I do not disagree that he is unusual, but Joanna has some notion in her head that he road the iron craft down from the stars.  Well, and what if he did?  Perhaps he is an angel riding in an angel’s chariot, and if he were it would be no bad thing for Emily.”_

            The praise of ‘Adam’ continued for pages, growing more and more fulsome.  The word ‘Hayyoth’ was mentioned as a word that Adam said was the only thing he now recalled from before the Waynes had found him.  Richard Wayne’s writing became more rambling and more disconnected, full of strange, esoteric biblical references.

            “ _Adam has opened my eyes.  This word—‘Hayyoth’—that he remembers, I have discovered it refers to the highest order of angel according to the Semitic tradition.  I believe the Hayyoth have come back to earth in the form of Adam to bless us.  They will remove original sin as even Jesus himself could not do, and our Emily will bear the Savior of mankind.  It is so exciting!_

_Joanna has been objecting more and more vociferously.  I begin to fear that she has been corrupted by the Dark Lord, but perhaps it is just that she is closer to Eve than I.  Adam says that all men are Adam, and all women are Eve.  Sometimes, the way he speaks, I can see that he holds a host inside him and that host cannot recognize the little details of individuality.”_

A few pages later, the entire diary was covered in the word, ‘Hayyoth,’ written over and over again, after which the handwriting changed.

            “ _I believe my husband is mad.  Ever since this ‘Adam’ came into our life, he has grown more and more distant from his family.  This Adam—he is a messenger, indeed, but not from heaven.  They call themselves the ‘Hayyoth’, which appears to be a reference to the Old Testament, but after all, should they not know the Bible?  Emily read it to Adam for a week solid, nothing else, hoping it would help him heal, and I swear he can see inside the heads of men.”_

The entries became more and more sporadic and worried until they culminated in a quick scribble.  “ _I have seen things no woman should have seen.  I have seen my child bring a child to term within a day, a child with wings and a demonic laugh, a child which nothing can touch.  At the behest of its monstrous father, it attacked our serving woman, and though she beat at it with a metal poker, it took no injury from her.  It was not until Emily dragged herself from the birthing bed and from the stupor she has been in for days and herself attacked it that it took injury and retreated with its father.  I go now to seek help from the church and from the Bible, for I can think of no other recourse but of a religious nature.  If I do not return, my hope is that this record of our struggle will be enough to allow others to carry on this fight against these demons.”_

            “Useful,” Bruce commented.

            “What?”

            “Only the creature’s parent could harm it.”

            “Maybe against Ivy’s, but I don’t see Harley doing anything to ‘Gabby’.”

            “I thought you said its father was the Joker.”

            “You really think we can rely on him?”

            “As a last resort?  Possibly.  He doesn’t like to be used.”  He clicked onto the next page.  “There’s one more entry.”

            “ _I leave this diary to explain to the future centuries what we have done.  What Joanna has done.  I have no illusions that I played almost no role in the business.  I remember almost nothing of the weeks subsequent to Adam’s beginning to court Emily.  I awoke this morning in the field where we first found Adam.  I was bleeding from several shallow cuts along my wrists and legs.  Joanna lay beside me, and just beyond was a slight mound of earth where we had found the iron craft._

_She explained to me that she had performed some kind of blood rite to bind the creature using my blood and hers.  Emily, she told me, was safe at the house.  Emily had helped her by fighting the child, which was far more powerful than Adam, but was not as intellectually sophisticated._

_She told me that to the best of her imperfect knowledge, as long as one of our family remained near, our blood would bind the creatures in their iron tomb.  When she tricked Adam here, there were many of the townsfolk gathered, their eyes golden, all of them appearing to obey him.  But the binding she performed worked, for whatever reason._

_Adam is gone.  The townsfolk are free.  I am free.  Joanna is dead._

_She was fatally injured during the battle; I do not know how.  All I know is that these creatures—these Hayyoth—have deprived me of my beloved wife, and I still do not know what they are—who they are.  Creatures of another world?  Demons?  Or, truly, could they be angels?  Creatures of vengeance and blood from the bloody God of the Old Testament, sent to test and try us?”_

Selina looked at Bruce.  “What…”

            He shook his head.  “I don’t know.  But clearly it’s somehow tied to my DNA—so when I vanished—“

            “These—these _things_ woke up?  What are they, aliens?”

            He shook his head.  “You know more than I do.”

            She sighed.  “All I know is that they do think in a collective, they can take over people’s heads, they’ve impregnated two unwilling women and stuff some kind of fertility drug into me.”

            “That’s right—Selina, would you mind if I took a little of your blood?  I wonder if a genetic analysis would give us a better idea of what we’re dealing with.”

            She laughed.  “Bruce, giving a little blood is the _least_ of my worries right now.”

            “I’m sure it is,” he said quietly, leaning forward and kissing her forehead.  “But I’m making sure to ask your permission about things like this right now.”

            She started to object that that was ridiculous and then sighed.  “Thank you, Bruce,” she said.

            Half an hour later, Bruce was scanning the results of the test while Selina lounged across the room, consuming the dinner that Alfred had thoughtfully dropped off a little while ago.

            “Got anything?” she asked cheerfully, trying not to think about how every minute ticking away meant a minute later she was to saving Harley and Ivy—and Maggie.

            “Shit,” he said hollowly, then kicked himself away from the screen.  “Maybe, but it’s nothing good.”

            “What?”

            He crossed the room to her and took her in his arms.  “Selina,” he said, looking wearier than ever.  “Do you trust me?”

            She looked up at him, at the lined face, the sweaty, messy black hair springing up in an uneven pattern from his puckered brow.  His eyes were dark and deep, and she was still marveling that he was really here.  But did she trust him?  Selina Kyle was not in the habit of trusting _anyone_.  Trusting people got her shafted.  But—well, she and Bruce hadn’t always been on the same side, but even when he was chasing her down, he’d always treated her with the utmost courtesy.  Really, only Bruce could be polite while he was handcuffing a girl.

            “Yeah,” she said, nodding almost in surprise as the word escaped her lips.  “Yeah, I trust you.”

            “This thing in your blood stream is burning you up from the inside.  I think there might be only one way to get rid of it.”

            She was tired and slow to comprehend what was making him shuffle his feet and gaze down at his hands like this.  When understanding dawned, she had a brief, horrible vision of Ivy’s mangled body.  “Oh, _God_ , Bruce—“

            “And,” he went on, mercilessly, his calm voice cutting through into her brain.  “I just don’t know how that will interact with—what we’ve discovered about my DNA.  And of course, even if it stops the chemical reaction which is going on now, what it will— _do_ to you.”

            She slumped into the chair.  “I swore to myself I’d never—never again…”  A vision of Helena’s little round face swam in front of her eyes.  Then she looked up at him.  “There’s something else, isn’t there.”

            “It’s nothing,” he said, his eyes hooded.

            “ _Tell_ me, Bruce.”

            She saw the calculations flash before him and let herself relax a bit as his closed-off face opened a little.  “Fine.  I think there’s a possibility such a child could hold its own against the other two.  But—there are too many unknowns.  It might kill you, or it might join with the Hayyoth.  In the end, Selina, this is _your_ decision.  I won’t force anything on you.”

            But she had already decided.  To save Maggie—to save Harls and Ivy—she’d do what it took.  And what he was saying wasn’t really anything she hadn’t wanted to do since he had first caught her in his arms.

            “Oh, Bruce,” she purred, leaning forward and sliding down the zipper in the front of her jumpsuit.  She saw his Adam’s apple catch in his throat, and she almost laughed.  “I think there’s _something_ you should force on me.”  With an amused grin, she pulled him down on top of her, catching his lips with hers, and the growl from low in his throat that reverberated in her ears told her that he had missed her as much as she had missed him.


	18. The Cleansing of Gotham

           The priest collapsed beside Harley, blood seeping from beneath him, as Gabby turned to look at the self-proclaimed last of the Nephilim.

            “Kill her!” Hush screamed at Gabby and Ivy’s kid.  Ivy’s kid started giggling as she raised both arms toward the sky.  Golden vines shot toward the last Nephilim, but she dodged easily backward.  Gabby wrenched the spear out from the priest’s back, and he gave a soft hiss of pain, blood bubbling up from the wound.

            “Gabby!” Harley cried out.  She knew it was stupid, but she _had_ to try.  Gabby’s blank eyes flickered over to her for a moment, before she turned her attention to the final Nephilim and raised her spear, light boiling out of it like some kind of wild vapor.

            The dark child smiled, a gleam of light reflecting hollowly in her dark eyes for an instant, and then she leaped lightly backward, somersaulting into the air like some kind of crazy acrobat.  She beckoned with both hands, and her two sisters took to wing as she had done, Ivy’s child laughing wildly now, a laughter that crescendoed eerily toward the raucous screams of a bird of prey.

            Then there were hands beneath Harley, dragging her upright, and Cat was holding her.  “It’s okay,” she whispered.  “You’re safe now, Harls.  It’s gonna be okay.”

            Hush had his back to them, but he was beginning to turn, and Harley felt a faint nausea washing over her— _He’s gonna kill us!_   And then the square of Gotham city was lit up with an explosion that rocked the ground and sent plumes of red flame licking upward into the sky, and Hush turned and was drawn toward it.

            “What is it?” Harley whispered as Cat carried her quickly away backwards and then squealed in fear.  “Mistah J!  Where’s Mistah J!”

            “Shush!” Kitty hissed.  “He’ll be fine.  Bruce is taking care of it.”

            “ _Bruce?!  You mean Batman?!  Mistah J’s arch-nemesis?!_ ”

            “Harley, I _think_ we have more pressing matters right now!  He’ll be fine!”

            “But—“

            “He and Ivy will be _fine_.  I _promise_ , okay?”  Harley looked into Cat’s dark eyes and subsided.

            “…’Kay…”

            Cat carried her quickly down an alley and into the back of a building that looked as if it was probably an office building during normal work hours.  She took her up in an elevator that she was about as surprised as Harley to discover in working order and ushered her into a room.

            “What’s goin’ _on_?” Harley asked plaintively.  “My _kid’s_ out there, Mistah _J’_ s out there.”

            “It’s okay,” Kitty said.  “The kids will keep each other occupied.  They seem to be invincible except to their parents anyway.”

            “Really?  Weird.  So what’s goin’ on?”

            “This is a council of war,” Kitty said, setting Harley down on a nearby desk and hopping into a chair herself.  “The others should be arriving any—“

            The door slammed open and Red staggered into the room, dragging Mister J, who looked a little ruffled.

            “All right, we’re here.  Now what’s the idea of untying us, running off and leaving us?” Red snarled.  Harley could see she was still in pain, but the awful wound in her front was beginning to knit, probably as a result of whatever had soaked her from head to foot in water.

            “The idea was that you could probably get yourself here and we needed to make sure that I could get Harls here without getting caught and killed.  Besides, didn’t Bruce—“

            “I’m here, Selina.”  Harley felt a frisson of shock go down her spine as Batman slipped out from shadows near the window.  He was holding the priest, whose face was drawn and white.

            “B-batsy,” she stammered.

            “Father,” Selina said quickly.  “Are you all right?”

            For a long moment, the eyes stayed shut in the face; then they fluttered weakly open.  “I am in pain,” he breathed.  “I’m not dead.”  He cracked a weak smile.  “Not yet, anyway.”

            “I’ve stopped the bleeding,” Batman said.  “He’d better stay here until we’ve dealt with the Hayyoth.”

            “And just _how_ are you planning on doing that, Batsy?”  Mister J vaulted onto a desk beside Harley and sat up, crossing his legs, hands on his knees, a manic grin on his face.  “Do tell!  I’m all ears!”  Then he groaned and put a hand to his head.  “S-sorry.  I don’t know what’s been coming over me lately.”

            Harley saw the incredulous look Batsy gave them, and she put her arms protectively around Mister J.  “They did something to his head,” she said defensively.  “But don’t you worry about it, Mistah J.  It’s all gonna be fine.”  _Even if my kid did just try to kill me._

            “Fine,” said Batman.  “Well, this is not the group I would have hand-chosen to save Gotham, but at least you all seem relatively uninfluenced by our enemies.”

            “Can’t promise anything,” Father Brian gritted out.  “My track record has been—spotty, at best.”

            “I don’t know either,” Mister J.  “They’ve been in my head—I think—but I don’t know what they’ve done.  They haven’t been able to control me much, I think.”

            “It’s the best we’ve got.  They’re distracted for a time, but that won’t last.  We have to get to them and find out how to defeat them.”

            “What do we know?” Red said.

            “They took me to a place—under the church,” Father Brian said uncertainly.  “I don’t remember much about it.  But it seemed like—a hub.”

            “You mean that place with the giant TV screens?” Harley piped up.

            Father Brian’s forehead creased uncertainly.  “I—I think it may have been a chamber past that, but I’m not sure.  There was a man—an old man—“

            Batsy started pacing up and down.  “They came back because there was no Wayne DNA in Gotham anymore.  Selina and I worked that much out, but—“

            “No Wayne blood in Gotham?” Mister J cut in suddenly, cocking his head to the side.  “No Wayne blood in Gotham?”  He raised a finger like a chastising teacher.  “Now look, I may not be the genius that you are, Batsy, but even I know basic bio.  You have a kid, the kid has your DNA.  So what about the Bat-brat?”

            “What?” Batman said sharply, and there was a sharp intake of breath from Selina.

            “Oh my _god_ how could I have been so _stupid_!” she exclaimed.  “Damian!”

            “But Damian is with Talia—Damian is _here_?!” Batsy exclaimed with sudden ferocity.

            Mister J grinned and licked his lips.  “Haven’t taken a crowbar to him yet, but the little redbreast could use some licking into shape.”

            “He’s _Robin_?!”

            “Dick took on your mantle, and, oh, I don’t know, it was all mixed up, but Damian has been here almost since you left,” Selina said.

            “A boy,” Father Brian put in suddenly.  “I remember a boy as well.  Asleep, I think he was asleep…”

            “A boy and an old man,” repeated Red.

            Harley was still watching Batsy warily, so she saw the immediate tightening of his jaw and even her the squeak as his teeth ground together.  “Ra’s al Ghul,” he said tightly.  “He’s behind this.  Somehow.”

            “Well, whoever’s behind it, what are we going to _do_?” Red said testily.

            “Let’s go find out what they’re doin’ down there,” Harley said.  “Then we can stop it!”

            “What about those angels?” put in Mister J.  “They’re out there laying waste to Gotham!  We gotta do something!”

            “I’m feeling better,” Red said.  “Cat and I can get into the church and deal with the Hayyoth from there, while you distract them out here.”

            “I’m comin’ too,” Harley put in stubbornly.

            Red opened her mouth to object, then sighed.  “At least I can keep an eye on you.”

            “I’ve got to come,” said Father Brian.  “I…know the church best.”

            “Then it’s decided,” Batman said quickly.  “The—Joker—and I—“

            “It’s Jack,” Mister J put in quickly.

            “What?”

            “My name’s Jack.”

            “Jack and I will help the Justice League while Selina and Ivy take Father Brian and Harley to see if they can stop the Hayyoth at the source.”

            “Right,” said Cat, moving to pick Harley up again.

            “Just a minute,” Mister J said abruptly.  He slid off the desk and stood in front of Harley, taking her hand between both of his.  “Listen, kid.  There’s something in my head, and I don’t know how long I’ve got, but I want you to know something—I will _always_ love you.”  He kissed her on the lips, and she stared after him as he moved swiftly away with Bats.

            “Oh, Mistah J,” she sighed as Cat picked her off the desk.

            “Great,” said Red.  “We’ll _never_ get her to shut up about him now.  I’ll take the priest.”

            As they left the room, Harley stared longingly back at the window Mister J had disappeared out of.

~

            Harley hadn’t yet seen the outside of the church.  When they had been brought here the first time, she had been either unconscious or in a great deal of pain from, well, being in labor.  She wasn’t sure which.  The last few days had blurred into a sort of weird drama in her head, and she couldn’t seem to extract the cause and effect of everything anymore.  Sometimes it seemed as if she had known Gabby for longer than Jack.

            Or, no, wait, she’d been in this church before, hadn’t she?  She wasn’t sure.  She’d been in so many of them.  Sometimes with Mister J, on a job, sometimes just because she wanted to light a candle for somebody.  Not that she actually thought God was paying attention, but, hey, it couldn’t hurt, right?  It wasn’t something she did every day, or every week, or even every month.  But somehow there were always a few times a year when she found herself alone on the streets of Gotham, often beaten and bloodied after she’d screwed something up for Mister J again, and that was when she sought the place out.  If she didn’t feel like listening to Red’s usual lecture, she’d wander into a nice church or synagogue, and light a candle for somebody.  (She tended to get lectured for that in the synagogues, but it wasn’t like she could keep them straight anymore.)

            Anyways, it was a small building, set on a little hill, far back from the traffic.  There was even a little yellowing grass sprinkled over the hill, and that wasn’t something you saw often in Gotham these days.  The door creaked forbiddingly as Cat shoved it open with her shoulder.

            “Okay, Father,” she said gently, turning to Red, who was supporting the priest.  “Where to now?”

            “Straight to the back,” he said, his voice weary, his eyes shut, the words dropping from between almost-still lips.

            They hurried to the back, and he directed them down the stairs into the cellar.  Harley felt her heart thud painfully in her chest as they passed through a room she recognized, still spotted with her blood on bed and floor.  They went down a passageway she didn’t recognize and to a dark archway.  There was dead silence beyond.

            “Ship…through there,” gasped Father Brian, sounding even weaker than before.

            There was a brief sense of disorientation as they passed from the dark, forbidding aisles of the church basement into—someplace else.  She blinked suddenly-smarting eyes against the bright lights, and her vision cleared slowly until she saw that they were now inside the golden ship with its high walls covered in video screens.  Harley’s tired brain was overwhelmed trying to process the scenes, but she finally managed to focus on one.

            A golden child perched on a rooftop, laughing, head thrown back.  Beside her, her calmer sister stood, spear in hand, head cocked confusedly to one side.  The third sister landed lightly beside both of them, dodged the spear easily and, drawing a midnight-black sword from nowhere, attacked. 

            Harley gasped as the sword thrust neatly toward Gabby.  It hit her square in the stomach and ricocheted off to one side.  Cat glanced over briefly.  “Told you they could only be hurt by a parent,” she said.

            “Oh, that’s right!” Harley gulped, with a surge of relief.

            “Keep going,” murmured Father Brian, gesturing toward a sealed door ahead of them.

            “How are we gonna get through there?” Harley asked, but the priest didn’t seem to have breath left to answer, but the question answered itself as the four of them approached the door and it whooshed silently upwards.

            She’d expected the room beyond to be dark, but instead intense light poured out, and she had to gasp and blink streaming eyes.  Kitty swore violently, but Red whistled.  “Well now,” she said.

            “What?  What is it?” Harley asked, but her eyes were clearing quickly, and she saw as clearly as Red must have seen, the vast pentacle in the center of the room, the boy spreadeagled across it, and the old man behind him, with a long white beard and a long tangle of white hair, whose huge, golden eyes turned to look at them as he rose to his feet.

            “You will not interfere,” R’as al Ghul said, in a sonorous voice, and Harley didn’t even know how she’d recognized him.  She was pretty good with faces, she guessed, but still.  On the other hand, it was really easy to recognize who the kid had to be.

            “What have you done?” Cat snapped, entering the room with Harley held snugly to her chest.

            “Only what we had to do,” said the chiming voice.  “When the Dark One was gone, there was only this one left, and this Adam, this desperate Adam, who spoke to us in his cell, where they thought him mad.  He promised us that if he gained his freedom, he would gain us ours.  It was not easy to cloud the minds of his caretakers, but it was done, and he has repaid us.”

            “Well, we’re going to repay _you_ ,” Red said.  She leaned Father Brian up against the wall, but he promptly slid down into a crumpled heap at the bottom.

            “Oh, are you?” said the chiming voices.  They sounded amused.  “One Adam would be more than enough to put an end to your pitiable band of Eves, but with two Adams and the Magdalene, what can we not do?”

            Harley got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.  Father Brian looked up with a gasp, and his eyes were golden again.  And Red was flung forward by a violent shove as the small, dark-haired figure of the Magdalene entered the room, her head flung back, and her eyes gleaming in her hollow face.

            “Maggie!” Cat exclaimed, stepping backward.

            “We are the Magdalene,” Maggie said, her hair floating strangely about her face. 

            “Maggie…” Cat said.  “Please.”

            “We will no longer listen to the demon within you, Cat.”

            Harley felt Cat’s shoulders slump.  “This is it, I guess,” she said, and she bent over and set Harley on the ground, but before she could straighten up, there was a confused noise, and a thud, and she dropped to the ground over Harley.  R’as al Ghul was standing over her, holding a heavy cane with which he had struck her.

            “Cat, get up!” Harley urged.  “Please get up,” she moaned, but Kitty’s eyes were dilated, and she couldn’t seem to move from her position.  Harley stared in horror as R’as al Ghul gave the club to Maggie.

            “Finish what we have begun, O Magdalene,” he said in his sweet chorus of voices.

            After the briefest of hesitations, she took it and raised it high.

            “No!” shrieked Harley.  She saw Red move, but somebody else moved first.

            “No,” said Father Brian, and he was there, in front of them, the glow fading from his eyes.

            The gold-filled eyes of the Magdalene widened, but the blow was already in full swing, and it crashed down heavily.  Father Brian collapsed like a broken marionette, and Maggie cocked her head to one side, in a gesture reminiscent, oddly, of Gabby.  “F-father?” she said, in a thin, quavering voice.

            “Finish the cat,” R’as al Ghul said urgently, but Maggie’s golden eyes turned up to his.

            “Oh,” she breathed.  “No.”  She threw the club violently to one side, and in one quick movement darted toward him.  He moved out of the way, but she ignored him, skipping lightly into the pentacle in the center of the room.  Her mouth creased in a broad smile, she yanked the boy upward and out of the pentacle, even as R’as al Ghul’s face split in a horrified grimace.

            There was a moment of silence.

            Then there was a scream that reverberated through everything, through Harley’s bones, tearing at her insides and her brain and everything with a horrific cacophony of voices, and she was screaming too, and Maggie and R’as al Ghul were jerking, horribly, as if they were being electrocuted, while golden lightning ran through them for what seemed like an eternity.

            And then it stopped, and everything was quiet.  Harley could hear rough breathing all around her; Cat was slumped across her.  She groaned.  Her head hurt.  Somehow, she managed to pull herself into a sitting position.  Maggie and R’as al Ghul were both slumped half-inside the pentacle, eyes shut, but they were breathing softly.  The kid was sitting up, with his head in his hands.  Red was pushing herself up against the wall, and Cat was groaning, clutching her head.  But Father Brian lay deathly still in a pool of blood that was widening around him.

            Harley gulped down a sob.  She didn’t really know the priest, but he was a really good guy, and he’d stopped Gabby from killing her—

            “Gabby!” she yelped.  “Red, we gotta get to Gabby!”

            Red gave her a dazed look, but then nodded briefly.  Cat was sitting up now.  She looked from Harley to Maggie to Father Brian, and then she started to cry, quietly.

            “Go on, you two,” she said, around the tears.  “I’ll make sure Maggie and Damian are okay.  Send Bruce here as fast as you can, okay?  With—with an ambulance.”

            Red stumbled forward.  Her front was still covered in sticky green ichor, but she didn’t seem injured anymore, which was a huge relief.

            “I’ve got you, Harls,” she said, somewhat unsteadily, hoisting her friend off the ground, and Harley spared another moment to gulp and gasp and wish that her legs would obey her.

            When they came out into the streets again, it was obvious that the tide of the battle had turned.  Everywhere they looked, there were dazed Gothamites shaking heads and wondering how they’d gotten there.

            “Where is she, Red?” Harley demanded.  “Where’s my Gabby?”

            Red rolled her eyes.  “Your hellspawn is fine, Harls,” she said steadily.  “Must I remind you yet again that she’s basically invincible to everything?”

            “Well, I wanna find her,” Harley mumbled pettishly.  She was worried.  Her kid wasn’t even a week old!  It was perfectly natural for her to be a little concerned.

            It didn’t take them too long to find the kids.  Red’s tentacle kid was fighting against the black one, the third sister, while Batman fended off Gabby.  For a long, panicked minute, Harley wondered where Mister J was, and then she saw that he was hauling himself up onto the same rooftop where Batman and Gabby were fighting.

            “Puddin’!” she yelled, and he glanced in their direction.  His face lit up when he saw Harley, and he waved.  Harley clutched at Red’s arm.  “Look at that, Red!  It’s gonna be okay!  Gabby!” she yelled.

            Batman’s foot slipped, and Gabby’s fist connected solidly with the side of his head.  He toppled over and lay as if stunned.  Gabby took a few soft steps forward, cocking her head to one side.

            “No, Gabs, don’t!” yelped Harley.  “Get me closer!  Get me up there!”

            “I’m doing my best,” Red responded acidly, but her tone wasn’t terribly biting.

            Gabby drew her spear out of thin air but appeared to hesitate as she raised it above her head—and then, in a fit of wild laughter, Mister J vaulted upward onto the roof.  In his hand was a bent section of iron pipe.  Just as Harley realized what was about to happen and opened her mouth to scream, he drew back his arms like a batter warming up and yelled, gleefully, “FORE!”

            The bat hit the back of Gabby’s head with a sickening crunch.  Her face turned back toward Harley’s for a moment, full of surprise—and then she fell, crumpling to the roof beneath her, before Harley’s treacherous voice could even form the words to make it all stop.


	19. Epilogue:  Awakening

            Ivy was thoroughly sick of hospitals.  It had taken all her strength to explain that yes, she was fine, and she was just lucky none of the hospital staff had recognized the sticky green sap-like substance that soaked her front as her own blood, or she wouldn’t have been able to escape.

            Almost everyone else was occupying a bed in Gotham General.  R’as al Ghul, Maggie Kyle, and Thomas Elliot all appeared to be in comas, though there was no indication of anything physically wrong with any of them.  Father Brian was hanging onto life by the thinnest thread imaginable; he had already been in surgery twice, and no one appeared to be hopeful.  Ivy wouldn’t really have cared, if it hadn’t been for how pitifully Cat—who had a really severe concussion—asked after him, and from the broken conversations she had with her friend when she was conscious, she was beginning to discover that not even she could have found a reason to hate the conscientious priest.

            Harley was back in bed, and even though her injuries showed signs of healing slowly, she lay like a stone and wouldn’t speak, no matter what Ivy said to her.  They had gotten an ambulance for Gabby, but well before it showed up, Ivy had known it wouldn’t be any use.  The little Nephilim’s head looked like a smashed pumpkin.  Whether or not the Joker had known he was capable of hurting her, he’d used all of his not-inconsiderable strength in the blow.  Speaking of the Joker, he kept showing up at odd hours, dropping off weird little notes for Harley, and then leaving.

            Ivy sighed and glanced over at the person sitting beside her.  Bruce Wayne—Batman—was quietly reading a book.  He didn’t seem perturbed about the fact that his name was now coupled with all sorts of disturbing rumors, but maybe he just had a good poker face.

            It had been two days, now.  Two days since the Hayyoth had vanished.  Two days since the departure of the Nephilim.  Whatever Maggie had done when she had disrupted the pentacle, the Hayyoth were gone.  Ivy had told Batman what had happened during the last long night while they waited to see who would die.

            “I wonder what they were,” he said softly, not quite talking to her, it seemed.  “Why did they have to follow those rituals?  It seems they were using Damian…”

            Damian had recovered quickly.  He said he didn’t remember anything after R’as al Ghul had appeared.  Bruce had smiled and told him it didn’t matter, then told him he was proud of him.

            He was looking out the window again, staring off into the fading stars.  Probably because of what had happened to his daughter, Ivy thought.  At least she was alive and might come back some day.  The bat-kid had shown up shortly after Gabby’s violent demise, having managed to overpower Ivy’s own maniacal brat.  She said she would take her far away from earth.

            “Maybe I can teach her not to be evil,” she had said hopefully.

            “Good for you,” Batman said, earnestly, but Ivy turned away.  She would have loved to take a golf-club to her ‘offspring’s’ forehead, but she didn’t feel like trying to argue it with Batman.  She was pretty tired of being on his bad side, and if she’d finally managed to get on his good side now she might as well stay that way.  She snorted under her breath.  She was definitely getting soft in her old age.

            Bat and Cat hadn’t been happy that their kid was going to fly off into the wild blue yonder by herself, but they accepted the fact that if they didn’t want to let Ivy take a bat to her kid, they were going to have to get her off earth, and their child was probably the only thing that would be able to control her.

            Ivy leaned over Harley.  She thought her friend moved a little in response, but maybe she had imagined it.  There was a note on Harley’s pillow. 

            “Harley, look!” she said, with an enthusiasm she didn’t feel.  There was no response.  “It says, ‘<3’,” Ivy went on, still trying to be ridiculously enthusiastic.  She just felt stupid.  “And it’s signed ‘J’.  Isn’t that wonderful?”

            Harley’s breath seemed to change slightly, but she didn’t move.  Her blue eyes stared at the ceiling like glassy marbles.  Ivy sighed and sat back.

            Two beds over, Cat groaned and tried to sit up.  Bruce was at her side in a moment.  “What is it?” he asked.

            “I had a nightmare,” she said, in a simple, child’s voice, then grunted and said, more strongly, “Nothing.  Bad dream.”

            He patted her hand, and Ivy noted the gesture clinically.  A human gesture of affection.  Was she trying to be human now, or just trying to observe the fauna in its native habitat?  She didn’t know anymore.  “It’s all right,” he said.  “What was it?”

            She looked down at the bed.  Ivy had the vague feeling she ought to be uncomfortable listening to this, but she wasn’t, so she didn’t try not to.

            “I dreamed you were gone again, Bruce.”  Cat punched him in the shoulder, but not very hard.  “Where the hell _were_ you?”

            “I was in history,” he said gently.  “I don’t know.  Some very strange things happened, and I thought I had returned here, but I must have slipped through the time stream again just at the end.  I think I’m off by a few weeks, or something.”

            They were still sitting like that when a nurse came in, looking somewhat exhausted.

            “What is it?” Cat asked immediately. 

            The nurse smiled.  “I thought you’d want to know that Father Brian is out of danger,” she said.

            Cat didn’t say anything, which surprised Ivy a little.  Then she looked over at her friend’s face.  She looked away.  She felt uncomfortable looking at that.  She made a note to herself to remember that in future.

            “Father Brian is all right?” said a small voice from the bed one over.

            “Maggie!” Cat gasped, trying to get out of bed.  “Maggie, are you all right?”

            “I don’t know,” Maggie said in a small voice.  “I’m not sure.  I feel strange.”

            The nurse hurried over to check.  “She looks all right,” she said calmly.  “Don’t worry, dear, I’ll send the doctor in to have a look.  You’ve had quite a few days.”

            She bustled out.

            “You’re going to be fine!” Cat said.  Bruce was practically holding her down in her bed by now.  Ivy came over to lend her assistance.  She looked over with interest at Maggie, whose face looked very young and little-girl-ish.  She was a small woman to begin with, and she was very, very thin. 

            “I’ll sit next to her, okay?” Ivy offered suddenly.

            There was a pause.  “Thanks, Pam,” Cat said.

            “Of course.”

            Ivy sent over to sit beside Maggie on the bed.  “You’re going to be fine,” she said, stroking back Maggie’s hair the way she sometimes stroked Harley’s when the girl had nightmares.

            “Yes,” Maggie whispered.  “It’s just strange.  It’s so lonely in here—but I’m glad they’re gone.”

            “Yes.  They’re gone.  It’s good they’re gone,” said Ivy.

            “They tried to hurt Father,” Maggie said.  “But he’s going to be all right.”

            “Yes, he is.”

            “I’m glad.  They told her all the wrong things.”

            “What?  Told who?” Cat’s nervous voice sounded from over Ivy’s shoulder.

            “You can talk to her if you want.  She’s feeling really strange,” Maggie said conversationally.  Her eyes began to glow faintly golden, and Ivy’s breath drew in with a shudder.  She was starting to draw back slowly, when a clear, bell-like voice issued from Maggie’s mouth.  “Mama?” it said.

            Harley sat straight up in her bed.  “Gabby!” she shrieked.

            “I think I love you, Mama,” the voice from Maggie’s mouth said.


End file.
